Show me a college student who, without prompting, hankers to be a business-to-business direct marketer and I’ll show you someone desperately in need of a varsity straightjacket.
That won’t be necessary for Ashley Soles, a senior at University of Nebraska at Kearney. Soles, who will graduate December 2003 with a Bachelor of Science in business administration, wants just that – but she discovered this only after seeing "a really enthusiastic lady who talked about B-to-B" at a Direct Marketing Educational Foundation event, as Soles put it.
That enthusiastic lady was Cyndi Greenglass, vice chair of the Direct Marketing Association’s B-to-B Council. Soles was one of three applicants picked from 35 to participate in a pilot mentoring program. This month, the initial three completed their first year of one-on-one work with industry insiders.
The three mentors (Jerry Hawkins of Experian; Kern Direct Marketing’s Russell Kern; and Ruth P. Stevens, of eMarketing Strategy) communicated with their charges at least once a month, and filed quarterly reports with the program’s operating committee.
While all three mentors offered guidance on course loads and career direction, Hawkins persuaded Experian to pay Soles’s way to the October 2002 DMA Annual Conference. In return, she was required to comb the exhibit hall and gather information that would allow her to create a business plan for a mock organization.
The show gave Soles an experience well known by most hard-core DMers. "I had a two-foot pile of information: I went through a lot of it at the hotel because it was heavy."
She turned in the first draft of what would ultimately be a 19-page proposal just before Thanksgiving. With some fine-tuning for Hawkins (highlight the pros and cons – executives are going to want to go through this quickly), she submitted a final copy in December, right before finals week. Hawkins ended up providing a copy of it to the DMA, making sure that Soles received academic credit for it – and circulating it to his own bosses.
Greenglass hopes to have 12 such mentor/student teams in place for the start of the academic year in September, and will make changes to the program’s structure based on input from the first six participants. While the first three mentor relationships were within supplier organizations, she would be more than happy to expand its reach to end-users. "But we focused on the qualities of the mentors more than their company," she said.
While Soles has not made up her mind about going on to grad school, she would certainly consider a position with Experian. And the feeling is mutual. "If I am in a position to recruit, I will do everything I can to get her in. I think the company would be crazy not to," Hawkins said.
Regardless, Soles has a taste for B-to-B marketing, and will likely stick with it after she graduates. "Businesses have the personalities of consumers, but there is more potential [for sales]," she said. "Marketing to consumers involves trying to market them a thing they have a need for, that they didn’t know they had."
If this is so, one could also say that consumers are like a student who didn’t realize she had a taste for B-to-B DM before she was introduced to it.
To respond to the opinions in this column, please contact rlevey@primediabusiness.com
