Planting Flowers, Pulling Weeds: Identifying Your Most Prof

Description:
Introduces a powerful, ten-step approach to forging strong, life-long relationships with any company's most valuable customers Two former Dell executives turned Fortune 500 consultants reveal the incredibly successfully, ten-step program they instituted at the world's number-one PC manufacturer for finding profitable customers, building and maintaining lasting relationships with them, and allocating resources based on their bottom-line value: the Direct Impact Growth System. Rubio and Laughlin use fascinating and instructive case studies based on their experiences at Dell, Xerox, Citibank, Mercedes Benz, Braun, and other top international firms to demonstrate the system in action and its phenomenal results. Janet Rubio (Austin, TX) led Dell's direct marketing and catalog programs and oversaw its 20 million dollar promotional budget. In 1998 she founded Direct Impact, a top national marketing agency specializing in helping companies accelerate and control growth. Patrick Laughlin (Austin, TX) left IBM, where he was the company's top-ranking salesman, to join Dell as a marketing manager. At Dell, he developed a range of sales programs and customer evaluation tools.

Review:
'Two former Dell executives set out the US computer company's approach to finding the most profitable customers, nurturing them and allocating your company's resources accordingly...' (The Times, 23 April 2002) '...an enthusiastic and lively approach to customer relationship management...' (The Marketing Review, Winter 2002)

Table of Contents:
Introduction: The Need to Know Customers. PART I: BUILDING THE VALUE SEGMENTS. Overview It Takes A System. Step 1: Defining Your Corporate Objectives. Step 2: Collecting and Storing Your Data. Step 3: Assessing and Analyzing Your Data. Step 4: Placing People in Value Segments. PART II: IMPLEMENTATION AND EXECUTION. Step 5: Planning to Capture Value. Step 6: Organizational Magnification. Step 7: Marketing Execution. Step 8: Sales Execution. PART III: EVALUATION AND MODIFICATION. Step 9: Metrics. Step 10: Closing the Loop. Appendix: Resources. Index.

Author Biography:
JANET RUBIO, a former marketing executive with Dell, led the company into direct marketing by launching catalog programs and target--marketed segment programs. As a consultant, she developed databases and direct marketing programs for Xerox Corporation and Mercedes--Benz of North America. The relationship marketing program she designed for Mercedes won a Gold Echo Award at the Direct Marketing Association Conference in 1997. PATRICK LAUGHLIN began his career at IBM, where he was ranked among its top sales representatives. Laughlin joined Dell as a marketing manager in 1992. There he developed a variety of innovative programs, including SMART, the Sales and Marketing Analytical Reporting Tool, which provided detailed intelligence about customers and prospects and tracked the company's performance against targeted accounts. Ms. Rubio and Mr. Laughlin are partners at Direct Impact, a direct marketing agency based in Austin, Texas.