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Navan Chamber would like to thank Joseph Daly and the team at Fidentia-Norwalk for providing these book reviews. Fidentia-Norwalk can be contacted via their website, www.fidentia-norwalk.ie
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Book
Title: Planting Flowers, Pulling Weeds: Identifying Your Most Profitable Customers
Author: Janet Rubio, Patrick D. Laughlin
Publisher: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated
Review Date: 03/13/2006
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About
the Book:
In the age of relationship marketing, the companies that achieve continuous growth are those that identify their most valuable customers, forge solid relationships, and create a fiercely loyal, immensely profitable client base. In Planting Flowers, Pulling Weeds, the high-powered marketers who created the Direct Impact System started at Dell deliver the tools and systems you need to sow the seeds to accelerate growth in your company and sustain that growth far into the future. In this practical guide Janet Rubio and Patrick Laughlin introduce the Direct Impact Growth System (DIGS), which has spurred growth at Dell, Xerox, Mercedes-Benz, and other major firms. They explain how DIGS helps you focus your company's energy on its most profitable customers and, in ten clearly defined steps, they show you how to implement this comprehensive system and power your way to unprecedented growth.
Review:
"Two former Dell executives set out the US computer company's approach to finding the most profitable customers, nurturing them and allocating your company's resources accordingly..." (The Times, 23 April 2002) "...an enthusiastic and lively approach to customer relationship management..." (The Marketing Review, Winter 2002)
About the Authors:
JANET RUBIO, a former marketing executive with Dell, led the company into direct marketing by launching catalogue and target-marketed segment programs. As a consultant, she developed databases and direct marketing programs for Xerox Corp. and Mercedes-Benz of North America.
PATRICK LAUGHLIN began his career at IBM as successful sales representative and then in 1992 joined Dell as a marketing manager. There he developed a variety of innovative programs, including SMART, the Sales and Marketing Analytical Reporting Tool, which provided detailed intelligence about customers and prospects and tracked the company's performance against targeted accounts.
Fidentia-Norwalk Opinion:
The title of the book caught my attention while browsing the pages of Amazon and although the last half of the book gets into dizzyingly deep detail on direct marketing, I enjoyed reading it. Written by practitioners (as opposed to academics) who have worked in prominent companies, their advice comes with authenticity. The authors share their Direct Impact Growth System in 3 parts: Building the Value Segments, Implementation and Execution, and Evaluation and Modification. The book is about combining Customer Relationship Management (CRM) with Prospect Relationship Management (PRM) to allow you to manage a whole market through a comprehensive Market Management System. The authors define a Market Management System as ‘an integrated business system which features a closed-loop sales and marketing contact system that delivers relevant messages to selected targets resulting in maximum sales and deepened relationships at minimum costs’. They place a very strong emphasis on Prospect Management as the primary engine for business growth. This appealed to me as we tend to place all the emphasis on CRM and only handle PRM as by-the-way.
Implementing a Direct Impact Growth System is presented in ten steps. It starts with Defining Corporate Objectives; Preparing the Infrastructure; Assessing what you have; Placing Customers in Value Segments (based on their available budget and your share of their wallet); Planning to Capture Value; Organisational Magnification (the process and techniques of getting the whole company to focus on the same corporate objectives), Executing the Marketing Plan; Executing Sales; Measuring Performance and Closing the Loop.
The authors place great emphasis on the one challenge we find in every customer’s business: assessing and analysing data – ‘about 1 percent of the content of a typical business-to-business database goes out of date each week.’ ‘Planting Flowers, Pulling Weeds’ ends by reminding the reader that Companies often fail because they are selling great products at good prices to the wrong set of customers. And they stress: ‘Leverage thy customers, leverage every single one’.
The book is practical, straight-forward and easy to read. Definitions and important titbits clearly stand out and each chapter ends with ‘Facts to remember’. Definitely for the hands-on manager; probably too detailed for the executive.
Reviewed by: Ria Wiid.
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