A Reseller Educational Series: Gold Mining

In 1970, the father of a personal friend purchased a ranch in the Northwest U.S. There was a gold mine on the property that was abandoned because only low-grade ore remained. The father began referring to himself as a retired gold miner. In the mid- to late-1970s when gold jumped from $35 an ounce to several hundred dollars an ounce, he immediately came out of retirement.

Resellers and vendors alike own a lot of abandoned mines. They are actually old leads, prospects that went cold and companies that did not have budget approval. This past summer my company outfitted a summer employee with “gold-mining equipment.” The success of this project was based on a simple premise – rather than limiting lead generation to the development of new leads – mine the ones you already own.

Ask yourself this question: “How many times have I gotten a call from a former prospect that was now ready to buy?” Budgets change, priorities change and most important, Internet telephony continues to evolve technically and become more affordable. A proposed solution that did not have an acceptable ROI three years ago may look great today. Plus, many new products that complement IT are being introduced daily. A good example is Dialogic (News - Alert)’s FoIP technology. In 2006, it was in its infancy; now it is a major factor in the market.

We began our project by asking our sales team to review their files and forward the information to our summer marketing researcher (Rob). Several email templates were created to address various scenarios and Rob began the process by personalizing the templates and sending them out individually. For example, one template addressed those that did not purchase due to budget considerations. Another template, more general, addressed technology advances in unified communications, workflow and related topics. By addressing different topics, we were able to send several emails to the same prospect over time; the more topics, the more potential “hot buttons.”

Remember the famous phrase, “There’s gold in them thar files.” IT

Max Schroeder (News - Alert) is the senior vice president of FaxCore, Inc. (http://www.faxcore.com).

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