CRM - May 2008 - (Page 44)

expectations,” while 23 percent characterized the packages as “great.” The post-event response proved to be extremely positive: 99 percent of hosts reported that they would host another party and 95 percent of hosts believed that the party made guests “more aware of and favorably inclined” toward event sponsors. Moreover, the survey concluded that over 90 percent of guests and hosts were at least familiar with the cookbook and its cause, fighting breast cancer. After the event, BH&G continued to see active traffic on the Pink Plaid House Party Web site. More than 3,000 consumer photographs were uploaded and over 1,250 comments were posted to the site, which stimulated additional responses from other consumers. Far beyond just those who participated directly, BH&G estimates that the viral reach generated by the event extended to more than 500,000 potential consumers. Motivated by the success of the Pink Plaid events, BH&G has allocated funding and resources to two other parties: Green House Party and Holiday Cookie Swap House Party. “[Continuing to] invest in House Party is a testament to our belief that [it] worked,” Stucchio Suarez says. Furthermore, advertisers that had heard about the event reached out to express interest in being considered for future parties. “We’re always trying to service our advertisers [and] provide them with marketing programs they can only find with Better Homes and Gardens…. The relationship with House Party has helped us to do that.” —Jessica Tsai Skin in the Game Centive smoothes away the calluses for a dermatology-product vendor hose sharp-dressed men and women with briefcases you sometimes see in your doctor’s waiting room are salespeople, and if your doctor does anything involving the skin, those salespeople might be from Obagi Medical. Obagi provides physiciandispensed skincare products to more than 5,000 medical practices nationwide. And while Obagi was already pretty smooth before trying the Centive Compel compensation management solution, the new possibilities offered by the software made things soft and silky, as well. “Two years ago, we were still working in a homespun environment; there was a lot of limitation related to the software environment,” says Bruce Carter, Obagi Medical’s director of IT. “We were using [Sage] MAS 200, but it wasn’t sufficient for our sales volume.” The company had numerous manual processes, and couldn’t get information to its 115 field salespeople in a timely manner. “I was brought in, in part, to solve this, and also to manage the commission plan. I had to find a solution that would be flexible. The Centive folks were willing to bend over backwards.” People put in the situation of buying business software usually say they want to be treated as if their business truly mattered, but on this point Carter may have been unusually insistent. “Centive was very “I didn’t want a customer-focused. I didn’t want a vendor to sell us an applivendor to sell us an cation; I wanted a partner we could work with,” he says. application; I wanted “They’re every bit of that, and then some.” Implementation of Compel went smoothly; from rollout to a partner we could first payout took two months, April to June 2006. “It was one work with.” of the smoothest implementations I’ve ever seen,” Carter says. “If there was a problem, they put people on the case until it was solved.” One time, Obagi Medical accidentally double-posted an entire quarter’s worth of data. Centive loaded Obagi’s backup onto a second server so that the quarterly posting could be done on time while the original instance was straightened out. “We hounded [our Centive liaison]—at all hours, [given] the time difference between Boston and southern California—and he was always available.” Centive was even willing to take a temporary hit in the wallet so that Obagi could get its salespeople ready to work with their end of the new software. “Our people know skin, not technology; we held the field rollout until [December 2006], so that the language in the dashboard was very easy to adopt,” Carter says. “Centive was very flexible with the license. They could have charged us for all 115 seats, but they worked with us to scale the cost to the rollout, charging us half at first and the rest as we went on,” he adds. THANKS TO IMPLEMENTING CENTIVE “Now we’re looking to add [sales COMPEL, OBAGI MEDICAL: force automation],” Carter says. In a increased net sales by 32 percent; twist, a smaller vendor is driving increased operating income by 56 percent; sales for one of the bigger ones: increased net income by 149 percent; “We’re looking at Salesforce.com and because of its dashboard integration added 200 new active physician with Centive.” —Marshall Lager accounts, an 18 percent increase. T the payoff BY LAUNCHING A HOUSE PARTY EVENT, BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS: $ made direct connections with approximately 15,448 people in cities all over the U.S.; increased awareness among 90 percent of party attendees regarding the Pink Plaid cookbook and its affiliation with breast cancer research; received the support of 99 percent of hosts to host again; and gained further brand awareness through user-generated content with over 3,000 photos and 1,250 online comments. the payoff $ 44 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | MAY 2008 www.destinationCRM.com http://Salesforce.com http://www.destinationCRM.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - May 2008

CRM - May 2008 Contents Front Office Feedback Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point Is CRM Too Hard for Microsoft Vendors Go Virtual For Feedback Sense-sational Marketing How UGC Can Benefit CRM DestinationCRM Dashboard Price Check, Aisle 5 Required Reading The Moving Target The Excellence Myth Seven Steps to SOA Success And They're Off! Are You Ready to Party? Skin in the Game The Right Numbers Secret of My Success Re: Tooling Connect Pint of View

CRM - May 2008

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