Choose or Lose

*Also known as "contribution margin," or what's left over to help cover the company's overhead and contribute to profits.

Resources
Want to be a one-to-one marketer? Here's what you need to know in four easy pieces. For more detail on each, consult The One-to-One Fieldbook: The Complete Toolkit for Implementing a 1 to 1 Marketing Program, by Don Peppers, Martha Rogers, and Bob Dorf (Currency/Doubleday, 800-323-9872, 1999, $19.95), due out in January.

1. Identify your customers. Sounds simple--but it's not, if you sell retail or through distributors, for example. However, customers are often willing to divulge personal information in return for better service, frequent-buyer discounts, exclusive product offers, and so forth. Be creative.

2. Differentiate your customers. Not all customers are equal. So you need a ranking system. Never mind trying to calculate the "net present value of all future profits." You probably don't have enough data to calculate the "lifetime value" of each of your customers. Instead, the authors recommend you score your customers on any number of variables--gross margins, repeat business, referrals, and so forth--that matter to you.

3. Interact with customers one-on-one. Once you've ranked your customers, you can prioritize your time, spending lots more of it on your most valuable customers. In return, customers may be more willing to share their purchasing plans and make you part of the process.

4. Customize each customer's experience with you. This step takes many different forms--from writing separate marketing plans for each of your top customers (like CRI's "Surprise and Delight" plans) to mass customizing the whole production line.

Screening Prospects: Six Questions
"You can't just ask the questions," says Beth Rounds, CRI's chief gatekeeper and reporter-in-residence. "I backtrack a lot. Sometimes I explain why I'm asking the question." Nevertheless, for anyone looking for a systematic way to rate over-the-transom sales prospects, this is a good "script."

1. How did you hear about us? A bad answer: "I found you in the yellow pages." Unlike many companies, CRI doesn't ask this question so it can decide how to divvy up the marketing dollars. "If someone finds us in the yellow pages, they have no reason to use us over anyone else," CRI cofounder Judy Corson explains. "So it's a crucial question." A good answer: "A colleague of mine worked with you at another company."

2. What kind of work is it (in terms of industry or scope)? More than anything, that question reveals whether the caller is trying to price a quick, onetime project or one that's totally outside CRI's realm. If so, Rounds refers the caller to an indirect competitor.

3. What's your budget? That's akin to asking someone how much money he or she makes, but Rounds often makes a ballpark guess on the project--and then gauges the prospect's response.

4. What are your decision criteria? Rounds knows that CRI doesn't fare well in blind bidding or in drawn-out, committee-style decisions. She's interested in callers who have some level of decision-making power. And she assiduously avoids getting involved in anything that smells like a bidding war.

5. Whom are we competing against for your business? Rounds is happiest when she hears the names of CRI's chief rivals, a half-dozen large companies such as the M/A/R/C Group, Market Facts, and Burke Marketing Research.

6. Why are you thinking of switching? "There's a two-edged sword here," explains cofounder Jeff Pope. "Clients that are hard to break into are better because they don't switch too easily. But you need a way to get in--so a legitimate need for a new supplier is OK."

Rounds reports that each month only 2 or 3 of 20 to 30 callers answer enough questions correctly to warrant more attention.

So why spend time with the rest? "It fits well with who CRI is," she says. "Do unto others....You never know where people will go."

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