Magnus Marketing Blog

Lately, a number of market research and telemarketing/biz dev firms are offering account profiling and account profiles. I have seen some products from leading firms. Those who have been reading this blog know my peeves about "Surveying" as Prospect Research, having Research people do prospecting, and the importance of sales intelligence as being a key to uncovering passive sales opportunities. Today, I will try to outline what an account profile is versus strategic research and try to get across why you need experienced and knowledgeable people engaged in this type of true sales intelligence work.

Account profiles are usually data compilations that include a variety of information from various public resources such as: Main business information and headlines/news, contact location, technology infrastructure, decision-makers, financial profile (which to be effective is 3 years of data), key industry drivers (which may be generalized statements like the pharmaceutical industry is looking at PAT technologies), an org chart. The major thing is the primary research where a few key people in the target company will be interviewed to determine: buying cycles, key projects, vendor preferences, timelines, etc. Most information is obtainable from Hoovers, CBS Marketwatch, Harte-Hanks, Gartner, and other major research sources. What the purchaser is paying for is the TIME factor involved in having an external person/party compile the info versus a salesguy who should be SELLING, not sitting behind a computer for hours on end pulling the info together.

Strategic research is more than just an account profile and in fact may not even be in an account profile. Strategic research is going far beyond those basics to begin looking at longer term needs and opportunities, analyzing information to determine needs that may not be publicized, or affects that are happening that are not well known. One example is from an effort my team and I completed at our previous employer:
A technology firm engaged my employer to identify ways to further penetrate an existing client which was a non-profit healthcare firm. I was assigned the job of compiling the information to identify avenues in which our client could strategically enter and grow this account further. After completing the Account Profile portion, I then proceeded to "look for things" that would get our client an "in". I began reading a ton of stuff on the healthcare industry visiting hundreds of articles and sources to piece together a picture of healthcare. Things like Electronic Patient Management, Wireless technology, and Emergency Response Mgmt Technology were rising as trends and areas where the target was examining. Turned out the target firm had done a lot of work in specialized patient care/disease management databases - this was not obvious material, snippets of information were all over the place (literally). I began building a scenario and a big picture view of environmental affects to the target. As I was combing through tons of documents, I came across one interesting little report on financial reporting in non-profit organizations (not particular to healthcare). I read down this thread and looked even deeper into financial reporting in non-profits, recently some firms were penalized for mis-reporting in the past and a "crackdown" of such was occuring with closer examination. Then I found the smoking gun, a report from one of the Big Four with a single notation: "non-profits will be subjected to SOX compliance regulations starting next year". If you didn't look hard, it was easy to miss. Notice I stopped looking at technology and started examining the business and environment, tracking down a trail, making connections that would inevitably involve technology. The effort took hours to do, this was no half day exercise.

My business development partner, an experienced prospector, made the calls into this large non-profit. I had done a couple of calls to validate the database building which they validated and were continuing to do (an opportunity). She did the heavy lifting and under my research direction called the Chief Medical Officer's office. The first meeting was secured with the new CMO to discuss some medical informatics and tech initiatives based on the long-term view of trends we had uncovered. The second meeting was secured with the Director of Finance....they were in the beginning stages of SOX compliance and were interested in speaking with a firm that understood the SOX area. Both were impressed by our knowledge, the way we spoke as if we came from the industry, and our intelligent portrayal and positioning of our client directly into the uncovered opportunities. It was later suggested to the client that they look at other non-profit healthcare organizations and run a campaign about SOX, while the budgets may not be as large as commercial firms, the opportunity is still valid. (This could have led to more business for my employer as well).

The work, the analysis, the "digging" went far beyond a simple review of a few websites. I became quite educated on non-profit tax and financial reporting, the healthcare industry, and the ins/outs of this target firm. This type of work requires higher level critical thinking and analytical skills, plus the ability to "follow the trail" to efficiently uncover THE RIGHT information. The conversations with prospects went into true business development - where are you with the disease management database development? Will this be linked to proactive wellness sites? How will you do that? Have you looked at Emergency Response Management technology? Who is working with you on that (identifying potential partners for our client). The questions weren't standard stuff like: Is your platform IBM and when do you intend to buy more servers. We also didn't talk to the tech people, we were holding conversations with the medical professionals and learning more about what was really happening in this company.

Account profiles are only that, typically junior level basic looks at an account - the cost can be crazy too. If I am going to spend a few hundred or thousand dollars, I would rather have strategic research - something that is truly "actionable" and "intelligent" that will put my salesperson at the level or just below the level of the target person. Deducing real opportunities from a crazy quilt of info is fun, but difficult work - not for people with pages on MySpace or phone jockeys who dial for dollars.