The One Thing You KNOW You Need to Do - But Still Haven't Done
By Pat Ryan

After nearly ten years of working with e-learning & training vendors, we have developed a wealth of knowledge about marketing to corporate training.

Specializing in a narrow niche has given us the rare opportunity of taking a glimpse at the many different challenges experienced by a wide variety of companies. Some problems end up being unique to one company, and do not plague other companies. Then there are those challenges shared by many different companies, large and small - and we see them over and over again.

All companies have challenges - and all companies (should) have people that have been assigned to address these challenges. But companies are like people: Sometimes, not everything gets done. We all have a "to-do" list with, say, ten items on it - but we have time to do only eight of the ten. So, there are always one or two things that get carried over to the next list, and so on.

We have noticed ONE THING that never gets done on the to-do list of the typical training or e-learning vendor. This "one thing" always seems to be the first thing to be put off, so it never gets done. It's probably a thorn in your side, too, hurting you every day, causing you to:

• Overspend unnecessarily
• Squander valuable time
• Lengthen your sales cycle
• Slash your results
• Reduce # prospects
• Shrink sales $

But, since it's not killing you today, it continues to be put off. But over time it erodes profits and could eventually devastate you. Also, the solution has not presented itself to you…until now.

The one thing you need to do - finally - is to eliminate the use of all the out-of-date or irrelevant information from your in-house database (You know, the one you use for direct mail, cold calling and/or email campaigns?) Your database is loaded with bad information - and you know it. Sure, there are lots of good contacts in it, but it is right alongside invalid or irrelevant contacts. How do you know which is which? You don't - so you continue using the whole database.

The problem is one of responsibility. The database manager's job is to maintain the technology side of your database. The sales people do the best job of "scrubbing" that they can with the time they have - but their focus is on SELLING, not "pruning."

You have no "Director of Pruning."

But if you don't "prune," you squander MAJOR marketing dollars:

• A lofty % of your direct mail pieces "go nowhere"
• Your sales people waste valuable cold-calling time
• Email campaigns are being sent to the wrong people

Plus, if you depend on reaching a certain number of "eyeballs" to reach your sales target, then you have greatly overestimated how many "eyeballs" you are actually reaching due to this distortion - putting your sales goal in severe jeopardy.

Also consider that scrubbing is not something that needs to be done once. Scrubbing needs to be done constantly. Why?

Change is happening constantly.

If you have any doubts, check out the typical rate of change in our corporate training database for updates we deliver regularly to customers:

This is a significant amount of turnover…
           …keeping up with this constant change is critical.

Since this type of maintenance to your in-house database may not be practical, what if, instead, you could outsource the creation and maintenance of a first-rate database of decision makers and influencers - to use for all your marketing efforts? A "total solution" would cut the fat, and ensure that you were always directing your efforts at the most appropriate contacts. The cost savings from eliminating bad contacts alone - and the associated time/money that has been misused on them - would reap huge dividends.

Hiring a firm to merely perform a "scrubbing" service on your database is not effective because they don't know anything about your business - and while they may point out invalid contacts, they are simply not capable of pointing out irrelevant contacts. Plus, a one-time scrubbing has only temporary effects.

You need to outsource this to a company that knows your business.

The Total Solution.
Mentor Tech Group (MTG) is a highly specialized company that has built an 18,000+ contact database of e-learning/training decision makers and influencers - and meticulously maintains this information by calling and re-verifying/re-validating all contacts every four months.

We are experts at performing this service for e-learning & training companies.

And while we can't scrub your database, you can treat our database as your own for your direct mail, cold-calling, or email campaigns.

This alone will instantly boost how many quality prospects you find.

Illustration:
Recently, an e-learning customer used our email platform to deliver their HTML email to 5266 contacts. The source of these contacts broke down as follows:

• 4700 contacts came from the customer's in-house database (which they thought was "very good")
• 566 contacts came from our database

• Only 31 "clicks" on their 4700 contacts
• Exactly 100 "clicks" on Mentor Tech Group's 566 contacts

We certainly can't promise results like that, but you see the difference:

• That's ˝ percent response versus over 17% response.

In every case we've seen, without exception, a company's in-house database is not nearly as good as they thought it was - and is usually in dire need of being scrubbed, scrapped or replaced!

How The Total Solution works:
Some companies want access to all 18,000 contacts on our database. They run multiple marketing campaigns throughout the year, and using The Total Solution gives them the ability to:

• Gain access to our entire database for one year
• Enjoy UNLIMITED usage with a renewable one year license
• Get FREE updates during the year

This creates flexibility, empowering you to:

• Get the entire database of contacts now, and have the flexibility to create smaller, more specialized lists based on your current needs throughout the year:
  • By industry, sales, # employees, metro area, state, or
  • By specific types of training, like IT/technical training, e-learning, sales training, safety/compliance training, customer service training, external training, corporate university, or
  • By more standard titles, not necessarily directly involved with training, like VP/Director of HR, CIO, VP/Director Sales & Marketing and VP/Director Corporate Communications

AND...get a complete update of your list every four months going forward.

The Total Solution gives you the power to sub out the substantial effort you would normally have to make (every time) in order to create a clean, targeted list (what you wanted in the first place) to conduct your marketing campaigns.

You can now get new, fresh information for each and every individual marketing campaign. The Total Solution is the only "list" you will ever have to invest in - and you will never again squander your time, resources and money on old, out-dated information.

Onward and upward!

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