High Touch Marketing (HTM) Tool Center

Most companies invest the lion’s share of their marketing dollars in the corporate brand. But it’s individuals who make decisions, not companies.  The most effective way for the sales force to go to market is to lead with their own individual brands, focusing on the personal relationships that open doors for the firm.

Marketing dollars are scarce, however, thanks to the financial squeeze brought on by the recession.  And sales teams are already doing more with fewer resources; with an already overcrowded schedule, they have little time to devote to thinking about how they can be personally generous or how they might advance their personal brand.

To help members of the sales force bolster their brands, firms need a cost-effective, time-efficient solution that can be easily leveraged across the organization.  Ferrazzi Greenlight’s HTM Tool Center gives sales team members point-and-click access to tools and resources that enable them to go to market as individuals.  In line with FG’s recommendation to allocate resources toward creating personal brands, the HTM Tool Center offers a more effective strategy to gain access to key decision makers.

The FG tech team will begin by working with the client to determine specific needs and will then build a custom HTM Tool Center based on client requirements and integrate that with the client’s CRM or other relevant system.  Key components of the HTM Tool Center include:

Pinging Template, or a “swipe file” of easy-to-adapt email notes to further establish personal connections;

Currency Connector, which matches contacts based on philanthropic interests, hobbies/passions, and participation in associations (industry, academic, alumni);

3-Minute Up-skills, or tutorials containing easy-to-use tactics that can be immediately integrated into regular outreach;

Relationship Research: Depending on existing client infrastructure in this area, FG can gather and document all publicly available research on targeted client relationships and supplement to client intel/insights that client already gathers;

Forum: An online platform, similar to a message board, that allows industry leaders to exchange knowledge on specific topics, and quickly sort by the topic of interest;

Google/Twitter Alerts: A content monitoring service, which allows users to set up email updates of the latest relevant Google results.  These updates can be set up to follow organizations, individuals, industry trends, upcoming events, competitor news, new product launches, and other various topics through key word queries;

Relationship Maps: Account-specific visual maps that identify the relationships most important to the company, the business impact of each one, and the current vs. desired state of the relationship.

Through the HTM Tool Center, firms will be able to build a set of self-service tools that can be leveraged across the organization to enable deeper relationships with clients.  Using those tools, strategic account team members will be able to go to market as individuals and enhance their own personal brands.