Sales Marketing Automation: Here's A Concept: Burn The Brochure
The Brochure
Bank Technology News
May 2, 2006
by Glen Fest
Excerpts:
Money doesn't grow on trees, but it sure eats up a lot of paper.
LaSalle Bank in Chicago found out how much in December, when marketing vp Jack Thurston tallied up how much the $70 billion-asset bank has saved since it quit printing product brochures for its sales operations.
"We did an analysis over a two-year period, and we saved about $3 million in storage, printing, and time savings," Thurston says, of how LaSalle gutted a process where a 2,500-brochure printing job could entail thousands of dollars in design and publishing costs.
Dumping the professional printing shop sounds good-but don't LaSalle's commercial sales teams need those slick, heavy-stock pamphlets to plunk down at trade shows and on prospects' desks? Apparently, only if they preferred the inability to e-mail quick-turn, fast-changing details on product specs, or didn't mind sending outdated, non-relevant material to potential buyers.
Through a sales-automation strategy first hatched about three years ago, LaSalle has electronically converted its print sales materials into ready-to-go e-brochures printed in-house, while also revamping its marketing and sales collaboration with a new-fangled "sales enablement" solution allowing sales professionals to devise custom presentations and pitches. Both systems work together in a solution from Chicago-based The SAVO Group, which helps LaSalle's sales teams adhere strictly to corporate messaging and strategic parameters while cutting out tedious PowerPoint creation chores.
According to Thurston, SAVO's Sales Asset Management (SAM) tool frees salespeople for more rainmaking activities and has improved the bank's cornerstone cross-selling strategy by teaming products together from separate departments. "We probably have the best loan portfolio of any bank here commercially, and yet our cross-sell was certainly not where it could be," says Thurston. "We increased cross-sell 30 percent last year, and we're looking to do so again this year."