Corporate Formal
It took Dodgeville, WI-based apparel retailer Lands’ End seven years to build its corporate sales division to a $140 million operation, but only three months to realize that its database, which was geared toward gathering consumer information, was insufficient for its B-to-B customers’ sales needs.
B-to-B databases must be able to record a company’s different levels of decision-making, says Lands’ End director of national accounts and corporate sales Richard Harney.
Top-level managers are influenced by purchasers, who might place a premium on vendor consolidation; payers, who prefer electronic data interchange systems; and even end users, who can determine if business relationships continue by not using the merchandise supplied. Failure to meet any of these needs can potentially kill a deal.
When Lands’ End started using its consumer database to record corporate orders seven years ago, the differences in customer files became apparent. For example, B-to-B files need fields not normally found in consumer databases, such as multiple “ship-to” addresses, multiple contacts, and areas for noting purchase order numbers.
“Trying to do this in a consumer database is nearly impossible,” says Harney. “As we [took orders] and tried to find places to stick this information, we realized there weren’t any.”
Capturing this data allows catalog mailing tests to be sent to various database segments. Lands’ End sent catalogs to the “ship to” addresses it collected, in addition to the proven decision-makers. Harney was reluctant to discuss the results of these mailings, but he urges other mailers to consider it.
Lands’ End customer reps needed to be trained to obtain and code relevant information. Incentive programs made reps more diligent about securing data that gave the company a fuller picture of how, say, its customers used corporate apparel.
Observing the gaps in a database can provide additional opportunities to market to business customers. “So often, databases reflect what’s there,” says Harney. “But they can also reflect what’s not there.” When products purchased by a given location are not bought by lookalike sites within the corporate structure, those spots are flagged as cross-selling opportunities.
Harney presented his findings in mid-May at a Direct Marketing Days in New York session.
