For more than 19+ years Mentor Tech Group has served companies marketing/selling to Corporate Training & HR.
The most common challenges we hear over and over again are:
- Lack of sales traction with stale, outdated in-house lists
- The desperate need for fresh leads – Quality Decision Makers in Training & HR
- The ongoing search for proven ways to produce measurable marketing results
Sound familiar?
Well, one company’s secrets to resolve these issues are being revealed…maybe you can benefit from learning about their success story.
Recently, Jim Ayers, founder of Team Building Training (“TBT”), sat down with MTG to share his experiences and insights regarding these three common challenges and how he overcame them to achieve great success. We’d like to share his story to provide you with a roadmap you can implement to improve your own sales and marketing results.
Mentor Tech Group: “So, Jim, thanks for chatting with us today. Can you tell us a little about the background of your company, Team Building Training, Inc.?”
Jim at TBT: “Sure… Team Building Training (aka TBT) is a national online gift company, delivering fun and entertaining care packages to patients in the hospital. In addition to sending individual packages, through our Corporate Team Building division, we now bring joy to hundreds of hospitalized children every year through creative corporate team building events.”
“Team Building Training was originally born out of a market need and desire to deliver interesting, customized gift boxes to people staying in the hospital – an option not available at hospital gift shops. Each TBT package includes specialty magazines combined with toys and activities, delivered in a high-quality gift box. The business was initially launched online, where people could order and send customized gift boxes to their loved ones in the hospital. As the business began to grow exponentially, interest from children’s hospitals grew and there was an immediate desire to increase the number of hospitalized children receiving TBT gift boxes. Using our creative talents and business background, we contacted a few corporations, encouraging them to assemble TBT boxes for hospitalized children as a philanthropic team building activity.”
Mentor Tech Group: “Wow, what a creative business model. Did you find much interest for this offering in the market?”
Jim at TBT: “We most certainly did. Before long, numerous companies began partnering with us, sending corporate teams to assemble, fill, and distribute TBT boxes to children’s hospitals around the country. Feedback from the companies and the receiving hospitals was phenomenal! We knew we were onto something.”
Mentor Tech Group: “So did the company just continue to grow from that point? What challenges did you face along the way?”
Jim at TBT: “Well, our first big hurdle came a few years ago when we wanted to grow the business beyond our referral network. We had a limited number of contacts on our in-house list and knew we needed to actively reach out beyond that group to continue to grow. We really needed to market to the people responsible for employee development and team building at America’s top companies.”
Mentor Tech Group: “Is that when you decided to work with Mentor Tech Group?”
Jim at TBT: “Actually, I initially purchased lists from several typical list brokers, but was highly disappointed with the results. We tried three or four lists from other companies, but they had significant email bounce rates and were riddled with errors. Typically, only about 10% of the contacts were ‘good,’ but most of those lists were outdated or contained incorrect data…What we needed was a highly targeted, accurate list to connect us with the actual decision-makers responsible for corporate training, corporate social responsibility, and meeting and event planning.”
Jim continued, “Quite honestly, we didn’t know a high-quality source of leads existed in corporate training until we came upon Mentor Tech Group’s market intelligence database.”
Upon reviewing the Mentor Tech Group website, Jim was immediately impressed with an informative interview about the origins of the MTG database.
Jim at TBT: “It’s interesting to know that the MTG database was uniquely hand-built from scratch as a result of frustration with other typical list sources available in the market. This is vastly different from the other lists we had sourced in the past.”
Mentor Tech Group: “Absolutely. Many people find our origins interesting. And today, MTG’s Market Intelligence Consultants still hand-build the decision-maker database, ensuring that it remains highly accurate and regularly updated. Our company’s service is highly unique in this way.”
Taking the next step, Jim scheduled a conference call to view the MTG database. He wanted to determine if it contained the information he required. It was during that online demo when Jim quickly recognized several decision-maker contact names for large companies with whom he was personally familiar.
Jim at TBT: “It was at that point that I KNEW this list was going to be a GREAT resource for us! I worked with a highly specialized business consultant at Mentor Tech Group. She informed me about the unique MTG database segmentation by Job Code (i.e. a person’s area of responsibility), and we worked together to develop a customized list to meet my target requirements. This included decision-maker contacts at America’s Fortune 1000 companies who were responsible for meeting and event planning, corporate social responsibility, and corporate training.”
Mentor Tech Group: “The fact that we segment by Job Code is also highly unique to Mentor Tech Group, allowing you to better target the exact decision-makers you seek.”
Jim at TBT: “Once we were armed with MTG’s high-quality list of targeted decision-maker contacts, we were able to develop and enact an email marketing strategy to make new inroads into the US corporate market.”
“By developing and implementing a well-designed marketing plan, Team Building Training continues to send email marketing campaigns to the Mentor Tech Group database contacts every month. Typical email content includes photos, testimonials, and stories about the success of TBT’s team building activities. Conveying our ‘feel good’ story allows a soft-connect to the target audience, building trust and brand awareness.”
Mentor Tech Group: “What kind of results have you seen with the MTG database?”
Jim at TBT: “Our email campaign open rates regularly average 10-15%. Our team tracks and calls every interested contact – we pay special attention to those with multiple click-throughs or “forwards” – resulting in further increase in qualified pipeline leads and new business. As a matter of fact, we have landed several large corporate accounts by marketing to the Mentor Tech Group database and we couldn’t be happier with results.”
“In the first year of marketing to the MTG database, we netted more than $175K in sales as a direct result of investing $10K in a custom-built Mentor Tech Group database. Moreover, many of these clients are now doing repeat business with us, year after year. The MTG database has been well worth the investment!”
Mentor Tech Group: “It sounds like there are two key elements to your success:
- Investing in the Mentor Tech Group decision-maker database, and
- Implementing a consistent, multi-pronged marketing strategy using email marketing and phone follow up.”
Jim at TBT: “Exactly. This database from MTG works. Period. It’s irrefutable… In terms of our growth potential, the sky’s the limit now.”
Team Building Training is now in direct contact with key corporate decision-makers as a result of implementing the MTG list and they no longer suffer the ill effects of marketing to a limited, outdated in-house database.
By continuing to market regularly to Mentor Tech Group’s decision-maker database, the future of Team Building Training is brighter than ever, bringing smiles to thousands of people – both gift box recipients AND team building participants alike.
For further information about Mentor Tech Group’s database of decision-makers in Corporate, Training, and HR, please contact Mentor Tech Group at 651-457-8600, Ext. 3.
*Team Building Training is not the actual company name.
