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Ask the Marketing Doctors

12. All our pickup and delivery services make it important for us to put clients on an invoicing schedule. We just send each customer one bill a month, or bill clients' credit-card accounts monthly if that's what they prefer.

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Hire Ground
Problem: This temporary-placement firm has hundreds of corporate clients, but they call only when there's an emergency.

One-to-One Solution: We do the simple things first.

1. We get to know the senior executives at every client company, and remember their needs in temp-help skills -- Mac, Windows, graphics, accounting.

2. We call a customer after every nontrivial assignment. One important purpose is to ask what a client liked least. That question doubles as a form of product specification. We take whatever the client says into account the next time we serve that customer.

3. To the extent possible, we assign the same temp employees to the same positions at any client, provided there was no negative feedback. In the feedback call, we focus on new temps' performance.

4. In addition to getting referrals from clients, our salespeople constantly dig up more referrals to give our biggest clients.

But the real business opportunity is in figuring out how to help clients anticipate, prepare for, and avoid emergencies.

5. We book recurring "emergencies" (financial closings, inventory counts, store openings) in advance.

6. We place a "crisis manager" at the client's disposal to document the situation and help figure out how to avoid it next time. We charge for the service, then measure specific savings in the next crisis. We feel strongly enough about the value and importance of this service that if a client balks at paying the fee, we often give the service away, at least the first time, to a prospective large client.

We look for additional services or products to sell, especially to our biggest clients.

7. We think about selling permanent employee placements, payroll processing, and collection services.

8. We also help clients identify full-time positions that might be better handled by part-time or temp personnel. ("Why don't we rent you a three-hour-a-day clerk to man the mailroom?")

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Wing and a Prayer
Problem: This struggling airline is known above all for poor customer service.

One-to-One Solution: None. First fix the service. You can't practice one-to-one marketing with bad service. Period.

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Plastique Injection Molding
Problem: This plastics supplier is dependent on three major customers.

One-to-One Solution: First, we get down the basics of one-to-one marketing for the three big customers.

1. We keep computer records on the needs of each customer.

2. We remember every aspect of every customer's relationship with us.

3. We maintain detailed profiles of every key decision maker, spec writer, and influencer within each customer's organization.

We make each customer's business at Plastique the line responsibility of a relationship manager.

4. The relationship managers have the authority to decide final policy with respect to their customers, as it concerns product delivery, customization, fulfillment, inventory, and billing terms.

5. The relationship managers are totally responsible for the profit their customers generate across all divisions and departments at Plastique.

We help customers think through and document any requests for proposals (RFPs) for extruded plastic products or plastic equipment of the type Plastique sells. For the next 10 RFPs for customers that we bid on, our engineering staff should actually have written the bulk of 8 of them.

Plastique gets more than 80% of each current customer's business -- which can be a problem. Customers occasionally want an outside bid just to be sure they're continuing to get the lowest-possible cost and the highest-quality product and service.

6. So we start an information clearinghouse for extruded industrial plastic products, not just for our customers but for our company as well. We gather relevant data from all over the country and report on our products' comparative strengths, cost, and so forth.

7. We build a World Wide Web site that includes comparative product data and serves as an interesting eye on the rest of the industry.

8. We're considering expanding our information service and offering it on a fee basis in a variety of related industrial applications. We'd subcontract it out.

One of our principal business strategies is to continue to search for new ways to help customers make more money in their own businesses.

9. Although our customers are in three totally different industries, we stay current with each industry.

10. Our salespeople always are on the lookout for referral business they can swing to a customer.

11. Our customers deal mostly with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) themselves, and our RFP-writing expertise enables us to help them respond to OEMs' RFPs as well. We don't charge for this service, but we make sure to record and remember each customer's boilerplate language and bidding preferences.

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