SMtlon 2—Pag* 3
Marketins News
June 25.1982
Marketing data base ups revenues for Ryder Thick Rental
BY GORDON J. BINQHAM
Planning A RMMrelr
Ry^tr Trudt Rantai inc.
DEVELOPING AN ACCURATE,
comprehensive data base and organizing specific marketing techniques for
putting that data to work have played
a pivotal role in the success of our
company.
It is difficult to isolatFrevenue results and tie them directly to a COQIponent of a marketing program.
However, we are certain that since we
Ke"Sfi5eted"markctlng program, our growth (from $200 milKon
in 1972 to $1 billion today) has exceeded the rest of the industry's by a
wide margin.
Nearly 90% of those annual revenues represent the commercial/industrial end of our business—fullservice leasing and rentals.
7 The full-service lease gives our customers, primarily manufacturers and
wholesalers, the advantages of having
their own fleet of trucks without suffering all the fuel, maintenance, and
insurance headaches. Those details
are handled by our 630 companyowned branch offices.
Today, our marketing services are
highly specialized to meet requirements extending beyond sales prospecting. Our data base helps to guide
nearly every facet of marketing activity, including research and evaluation.
HOWEVER, BACK IN 1972,
when we first began working with a
.provider of extemal inarketing data,
our marketing objectives . weren't
nearly as ambitious,
•
At that time, sales prospecting was
left largely to the district managers,
and their sales force to conduct as they
saw fit. This "shotgun" system was not
well-organized or cost-effectiVeT
*••' The field people started to request
marketing sum>ort from headquarters. We examined what other successful companies were doing and determined that a targeted marketing
program, organized at our corporate
headquarters, woirid enable our field
people to cost-effectively penetrate
- key market*,—
—~™^,_™_For these reasons, and because of
' the rapidly rising cost of doing business, we asked Dun's Marketing Services, Parsippany, N, J,, a company of
the Dun & Bradstreet Corp,, to help us
refine our marketing efforts and pro. vide our sales force with a list of highpdtential prospects.
The Dun's Market Identifiers provided essential data about prospects
(most importantly, names of key decision makers) and helped us screen our
existing clients from our mailings,
rtn Trinr'« filg
*
M
•
Gk>ftlon J.
WE BEGAN SUBSCRIBING to
DaU Resources' Econometric Consulting marketing service, which uses
a computer model of the U,S, ecbnomy and its overaU components to
forecast industrial production for specific industries.
Matching these forecasts with our
own dau, we can focus on specific
comparues and industries Considered
high-potential targets because of economic factors and their previous use
of our services.
The combined marketing and economic data enabte our district offices
to balance their customer mix, avoiding aj)redominance of customers in
anyone cyclical industry. As a result.
The success of
inclustrial marketing
research depends
on who does it.
Who are
your best prospects?
How can you sell them?
At EIrick and Lavidge. we get you reliable answers to these questions^
Our staff of experienced research specialists has a thorough understanding of the complexf^urchase decision behavior that is characteristic of industrial markets. We are experienced m identifying
the right sources, gaining their confidence and obtaining reliable
information from them. We have 30 years of experience in planning,
analyzing and producing useful industrial marketing research studies.
Our services include studies of; "Market Potentials "Product
Designs "New product and Service Concepts "Selling and Distribution Methods "Market Structure "Pricing "Advertising
and Promotion "Company and product images "Service levels
Contact any one of our offices for further details
EIrick and Lavidge, inc.
10S Riverside Pia.'a 9Corpo!aif SquaM/
Ch!caqo IL 60606
Atlanta GA 30329
i312)726-0666
(404) 32'^. 3221
240 StocKtc;n. On Union Squcjre
San Francisco. CA 9410b
(415i 434 0536
Bookshelf
By Edgar A. Pessamier. Textbook examines
product management, the innovation procees, strategy formation, analysis and management, communication oesign. organization m d control of ongoing efforts, and
leade9M0 style. Written for business students, but can be used by managers artd
::tt)eoreticians. Focuses on problems of developing and marketing new products, John
Wiley & Sons Inc., One Wiley Dr, SomenMft,
NJ 08873, 868 pp.
^__
. I
INITIALLY, we purchased a list
of American businesses with a total of
20 or more employees for direct mail
canqnugns, coordinated by the headquarters ofhce, and to further provide
prospect cards to ourfieldsales forcie,
^^
That list gave us access to prospects,
in a broad range of industries comprising our primary targets as well as
several other markets we sought to
evaluate. We generated a significant
increase in responses to direct mail
and the sales force noticed the high
qualitf of information.
At the same tirne, we asked Dun's
to run a profile on our existing cus_^toincrs to determine who they were in
terbs of size and industry. The profile
data helped us focus on prmpects
most similar to our best customers,^
—^^Welater added dau about Canadian
firms to our programs.)
Z6,_wcasked Trine Transportation Consultaiit
of Dun & Bradstreet, to develop a file
Based on the truck registration infor' mation maintained by eacli state.
Product ManagMiMfit—
Strategy and Organization
Sacond Edition
'
But, response from the field indicated the two-card system was confusing- •__.__
_,
OUR SOLUTION was to inerge
the two files to produce our own
prospect cards. The combined information gave us flexibility for Urget
marketing at the district level. Not
only did we identify companies likely
to need our leasing services and tte
key decision makers to be reached,
hut the types of thicks best suited for
their businesses.
For example, if^veral trucks suddenly became available in a certain
location, we could immediately Urget
prospects in that sales territory according to their likelihood to use that
type of vehicle.
Or, we eould Urget direct mail or
phone messages according to the
manner in which a specific urget audience uses the truckis.
The merged prospect file, along
with an internally-generated monthly
customer file, provides our sales force
with the marketing tools to pinpoint
sales objectives aijd^diredt specific
messages to each urget industry'^
To this "rifleshot" system for targeted marketing, we added two more
refinements.
keting information in place, we have
expanded its usefuhwss beyond sales
prospecting.
For example, the date serve as aa^—
all-around tool tor advenising'marketing research, and noarket planning,' ^
as well as saies development. We also
use it to select respondents foY'surveyi ,.
lusinesdmating market poteni
The results help us decide itdiere to
invest our advertising .dollars..Jhe^
AT THIS P O I N T , we were same daU also are employed to deproviding our sales force with so termine how to realign existing sales
much dau a|^d so majny ways to cat- territories and whete to locate
egorize markets that the next logical branch offices.
step was to produce a prospecting
Our marketing researchers arc
manual about all of these marketing using the date base to examine
tools.
changes in the market due to the
The manual shows field personnel Motor Carrier Act of 1980, which eshow to use a marketing analysis to sentially deregulated the for-hire
determine potential, rank Urgets, use motor carrier industry, lliis k^^sla^
marketing techniques in specific situa- tion should open up many new oppcwtions, and apply the econometric daU, tunitia for us.
The primer also includes samples of
Now that our sales and marketing
direct-mail letters.
efforts are highly Urgeted to yield
Our salespeople use the manual to maximum ptoductivity, our next obdesign their own local marketing ac- jective is to simplify the salespeople's
tivities. They can rank-order pros-* job by saving them time. We hope to
pects by any namber of criteria, in- adapt our computer network, comduding likelihood to lease vehicles, prising a mainframe coniputer on our
economic outlook, or corporate rela- headquarters and tenmnals in our distionships to other Ryder customers.
trict offices, to aUbw the field staff to
Then they can conUct our market- request prospect d a u in the form of
ing information center in Miami to labels or cards on-line,
order prospect cards, labels, Usts of
' 'Computer generation of these
prospects in their territory who re- marketing aids wiU eliminate delays
ceived a nationally distributed mail- due to processing of traditional reing, or materials for their own mail- quests and delivery by nnail.
ings,
WITH THIS WEALTH of
a downturn in one single market or
industry won't severely hurt any.af
our branch locations,
/Tree
listing to our marketiflS^daU bank.
This file enabled the sales force to determine if a pros'pect was ""related" (at
e division^r^bsjdlMy lev^, for
example) to^ an ex
thereby easing the initial sales call to
that prospect.
, ,
-
These data enabled us to pre<]iitiify
Urgets according tf the truck size
most frequently used by each itidustry. At this point, we ^
rorce two dillerent sets of prospect cards—one based on the Dun's
Identifiers daU and the other based
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