Ideally, a company would conduct a needs/benefits analysis with the methodology described above for every individual customer and prospect and then build capabilities and processes to satisfy every need. Since that is not economically feasible, companies try to identify the most important customer needs, in the most crucial customer segments (from a financial perspective) and then figure out where they can add value better than competitors. Effective marketing segmentation results in customers being group by implied needs. Since, as we mentioned, it is not possible to define or identify needs perfectly, we instead find "market factors" (like size, SIC code, purchase process, etc.) among customers and use these market factors as proxies for needs. The intuition in this step is that customers with similar characteristics have similar needs -- this is especially useful if there are multiple common characteristics among different customers.

Good segmentation allows for effective messaging and targeting to crucial segments, and prioritization of customers by sales potential and ease of penetration. It can also help identify resource requirements necessary to increase market share by segment, target capabilities needed to improve sales and marketing results, or allow the company to communicate to customers in language that makes sense to them (different industries often use different terminology).

Given the similarity of product assortment, distributors often must position around some combination of attributes such as pre-sales expertise, technical support, training, solutions, and product availability. The exact mixture of these attributes in competitive strategy and messaging varies for each distributor. Real Results Marketing approach to getting the right mix involves the use of traditional competitive strategy tools such as SWOT analysis, Porter's Five Forces analysis, and other competitive analysis techniques combined with our positioning and messaging methodology.

The Real Results Marketing positioning and messaging methodology integrates three sources of information:

• Competitive claims analysis: this involves gathering all claims that are made by the distributor and its competitors. These claims are found in the electronic and print literature of the distributor and its competitors. The claims are categorized, for example, a distributor may claim "outstanding service" or "in business for 50 years."
• Market requirements: the customer requirements are gathered through qualitative and quantitative market research. For example, "same day shipping" may be an important requirement whereas "post sales tech" support is a very important requirement. The market requirements prioritized based on the research.
• Core competencies: the distributor's areas of expertise are also evaluated. The distributor may be very good at tech support while having a smaller set of products than another competitor.

Real Results Marketing synthesizes the value claims, market requirements, and core competencies to create positioning that is unique and relevant to the distributor's customers. The positioning tends to emphasizes benefits that are meaningful to customers instead of features.

It's more straightforward to predict how a marketing campaign will affect customer behaviors vs. predicting financial impact directly. Yet, it's easy to derive the financial results of achieving changes in customer behavior. Based on the analysis, we have many marketing objectives to consider and the ones we choose will drive the specific marketing actions we recommend. The follow table illustrates some possible customer behavioral changes we may wish to drive along with some examples of programs that often achieve these goals:

We model performance outcomes at different levels of success for each objective and set numerical goals (e.g., "increase number of active customers from x to y") based on our confidence level in achieving them. This will take the form of various pro-forma's that assume various levels of success in driving customer behavioral changes and calculating the resulting revenue and profit effects. The bulk of the work in finalizing the marketing plan will involve developing a detailed "campaign plan" that identifies specific growth initiatives to be implemented each month during 2010. Examples include:

• Sales collateral
• Email communications such as newsletters, new product announcements, etc.
• Customer lifecycle management (new customer welcome; retention, etc.)
• Direct mail to customers and prospects
• Federal Government program
• Catalog enhancements, expansion and circulation increase
• Targeted advertising in trade journals
• Trade shows and other forms of event marketing
• Outbound telesales
• Lead scoring and management
• New customer welcome campaigns
• National accounts campaigns

Recent research performed by Real Results Marketing showed that less than half of distributors today have an e-commerce capability. Only about 20% have an effective outbound telephone sales channel. Further, for many distributors have concluded that "print" is dead and they have abandoned their print catalogs.

From our experience with clients and the research we have done, we know that a robust multi-channel, multi-marketing vehicle strategy is essential. In some market segments a multi-channel, multi-vehicle strategy provides competitive advantage whereas in other segments, it is necessary for survival. Real Results Marketing provides assessment, selection and planning, and implementation of multi-channel, multi-vehicle capabilities. We place particular emphasis on e-commerce and outbound telephone marketing channels. For marketing vehicles, we have deep expertise in direct response including catalog marketing, email marketing, and search.

Read the article: The Distributor Marketing Imperative: Differentiation through Marketing Channels

Read the article: The Distributor Marketing Imperative: High Impact Marketing Vehicles

The result of a RRM pricing analysis and improvement engagement is as follows:

• Reduced frequency and amount of discounts

• Reduced sales time and loss of business due to price competition

• Higher profit margins

• Sales training for pricing and discounting

Most products and services are never sold at a stated list price, especially in a sophisticated and competitive market. For most company's this results in inconsistent and unpredictable sales and financial performance. We identify how discounting is managed and how it affects the profitability and cash flow of the company. Our price optimization process uses recent and historical data to identify how to adjust prices and implement rational discounting policies in order to maximize profit margins, reduce costs to serve certain customers, and prevent unnecessary loss of business to competition. Bottom line results have been in the range of one percent to more than five percent for a company or product line, without risking the loss of business to competitors.