Mine
Your Own Business!
e-news from
MasterMine™
Affordable
analysis and reporting for GoldMine
www.MasterMineVAR.com
January 2002
In this
Issue:
VAR:
Database Marketing
Client: Employers’ First Choice Insurance Services
A Word from Rob
Greetings
for the New Year! 2002 holds great promise as we evaluate our progress, review
our goals, and set new ones. Last year, in the midst of an economic downturn,
MasterMine set new records in sales and seats. GoldMine VARs like you
recognized MasterMine as a great opportunity to expand their business with
existing clients and ensure the success of new implementations.
We look forward to smashing our 2001 records early
in the new year! And we are eager to continue to share with you some of the
winning strategies of other MasterMine VARs so that we can all enjoy more
success, fun and profits throughout this year. Remember, as Alphred P.
MineStein says, “If ya don’t mine yer own bizness, sumbody else will!” Well,
we’re here to help you mine your GoldMine business for more profit in every
phase of selling and support.
1.
Profitable
Strategies for 2002!
In this
continuing difficult economic environment, many GoldMine resellers are looking
for strategies to make the best of 2002. We offer several profitable ideas that
can provide cost-effective and productivity-enhancing solutions to your
clients. This year, we’ll be helping you develop plans and marketing and
support materials to successfully pursue each of these winning strategies.
Revenue-increasing strategies for 2002:
a) Increase your revenue from existing GoldMine
clients
by offering MasterMine as a way for your clients to use their GoldMine data to
quickly and easily identify their most effective sales reps, most profitable
clients, and most receptive prospects. (See the Case Study below - #5 - for a
great example.) Leveraging existing relationships is easier than
building new ones, and you are in a unique position to provide huge management
consulting value through MasterMine!
b) Gain more GoldMine clients by differentiating your
GoldMine consulting practice through your use of MasterMine as an amazingly
easy-to-use and flexible analytical solution. MasterMine differentiates you not
only from competing GoldMine VARs in your area, but also from other
“Mid-market” CRM solutions that lack a simple business intelligence capability.
c) Use MasterMine professionals to help make sales
pitches.
Our sales team assisted many VARs in making some initial MasterMine sales in
2001, both face-to-face at VAR-sponsored end-user events and over the web. We
are available for more “multiplier” presentations in 2002. Schedule us in
advance to assist you in demoing MasterMine via Web conference or in person for
maximum impact.
d) Resell MasterMine Training. In addition to offering
your own online or in-class MasterMine training, you can resell our training
services to your MasterMine clients. You earn the same discount (30% or 40%) as
you do on software, and you can rest assured that your clients are receiving
the highest quality instruction in MasterMine use. If you wish to offer formal
class training, MasterMine can even provide an in-person instructor. Call us to
discuss this option or schedule online training.
e) Resell Our Support Package. We’ve
simplified our phone support and customization offerings, so that now you can
purchase and resell support packs of 10 15-minute incidents for $500 (retail)
and make a profit every time your clients call for assistance! See our support
webpage, at www.masterminevar.com/support.html for more details.
2.
Record-setting
and Award-winning Year for MasterMine
MasterMine had an
exceptional year in 2001. Among the many highlights were:
If you are not yet experiencing the advantages of adding MasterMine to your
GoldMine arsenal, visit our website to download a free demo today or call us at
(877) 877-7212, x.2 for more information about your own NFR copy and training.
Make our success your success!
2.
Make
a Profitable Trip to Vegas in February
We’ll be offering
full training in MasterMine in Las Vegas in February, in connection with the
annual SalesMagic Conference. Even if you don’t sell SalesMagic, it’s worth
your while to make the trip February 23 and 24 to meet with other MasterMine
VARs, and get concentrated, face-to-face basic and advanced training (part of
the requirements for MasterMine Authorized and Gold VAR levels) or get our
highest level “MasterMiner” template-customization training (needed to be a
Platinum-level MasterMine VAR).
In addition to the main training courses, we’ll
also discuss optimal integration of MasterMine with SalesMagic® and OmniRush®,
and talk about deployment issues and discuss some actual implementations of
MasterMine.
Use this chance to get fully current in the three
most valuable GoldMine add-ons all at once: MasterMine, SalesMagic and
OmniRush. This is an opportunity well worth the conference cost. For more
details, go to: http://www.salesmagic.com/Training.htm. Call us at (877)877-7212
to talk about more ways you would like to benefit from this unique event.
3.
VAR
Advantage: NEW! Monthly Conference Calls
Many top
MasterMine VARs have already participated in our new monthly conference calls,
designed to provide VARS with the most recent MasterMine information, discuss
marketing and sales tools, allow VARs to learn from each other, and us to get
feedback on how we can enhance MasterMine and its marketing tools to best
support you. Each month, we review a case study that helps you to understand
how MasterMine is working to dramatically raise GoldMine’s value to an actual
end user.
Notification of the date and time of this
conference call is by e-mail. If you haven’t received notice in the past,
please let us know by e-mail that you wish to be on the list. Only those who
respond are sent the conference call number and I.D. This small investment of
one hour each month may provide you with unexpected benefits. Whenever
possible, we schedule the call for the first Thursday of each month. Please
join us for the February call on Thursday, February 7 at 9:30 CST.
Here’s what you missed, if you weren’t able to
join us for the first conference call in our first two calls:
The December conference call included a brief demo
of some of the major product enhancements in Version 3.0, a discussion of the
benefits of site licensing, including cost/profit comparisons with named-user
licensing, an overview of the MasterMine VAR program profit opportunities, and
an update of the MasterMine marketing support materials available for download
from the website. See agenda and links for this meeting by clicking HERE.at www.masterminevar.com/agenda12
The January conference call included a discussion
of the Case Study featured in this newsletter (#5); Rob went over the five key
ways to make money working with/selling MasterMine software and support; a
discussion of the VAR discounts and resale opportunities with MasterMine
Support Packages (10 incidents @ 15 minutes for $500); a review of new training
opportunities at the upcoming SalesMagic conference (#3) in February in Las
Vegas, and an open forum for questions, issues and suggestions from VARs.
These conference calls are an excellent way for
you to learn more about other VARs’ issues and successes, and to put in requests
for improvements in our VAR support and marketing programs. All authorized
MasterMine VARs are welcome to participate. Don’t miss our February 7, 9:30 am
(CST) call!
4.
Case
Study:
VAR:
Database Marketing
Client: Employers’ First Choice Insurance Services
The Client
Employers’
First Choice Insurance Services of Citrus Heights, California, (near
Sacramento) was founded in 1986. They market voluntary employee benefits
programs to small businesses with fewer than 10 employees. These programs
enable employees to pay for their own disability, retirement, life insurance,
and other benefits through payroll deductions, offering an affordable benefit
package option for employees whose employers cannot afford to offer them
company-paid benefits.
With five offices throughout California, and
additional offices in Evanston, Illinois and Phoenix, Arizona, EFCIS employees
about 40-60 sales agents, a dozen telemarketers in its call center, and 4-5
administrative personnel.
The Problem
Patrick Miller, general partner at EFCIS, has used
GoldMine since 1996. His raw database includes over 400,000 records, with
40-some user-defined fields, and his client database includes approximately
15,000 records. “I always knew that there was a ton of useable data in my
database, but I did not have an effective way to mine those resources from
GoldMine. Before MasterMine, I had a good idea about what was happening
throughout our company, but I couldn’t pinpoint it or document it,” said
Miller.
The Solution
“Within a few days of installing MasterMine, I
discovered how to gain total control over my business by mining GoldMine data
from the call center, sales department and administrative department,” Miller
said.
“For example, when we enroll a client, we build an
organizational tree in GoldMine. We record the customer’s initial enrollment
date, their contact person, the products they signed up for, the premiums for
those products, whether they handle payroll internally or outsource it, whether
their pay cycle is weekly, bimonthly or monthly, when payroll deductions start,
and all kinds of other data.”
Increase sales effectiveness
“Lead
result information from my sales force can be analyzed quickly, in meaningful
ways to allow me to monitor which agents are closing the greatest percentage of
appointments, and which are wasting expensive resources. We use MasterMine to
look at our results office by office, and agent by agent, and to determine how
efficient our sales agents are. We know the percentage of “no shows” by client,
percentage of “no shows” by agent, the “pitch-miss” percentage when an agent
presents to a prospect but does not get the sale, what percentage of an agent’s
sales are sold on the first call, what percentage progressed to enrollment.
Now I know exactly which agents are most
efficient, and which ones aren’t showing up for meetings. Now I know if my
average “no show” is 22 percent, and a particular agent’s average is 30-35
percent, that agent is probably arriving at the meeting too early or too late.
This information allows me to work with the agent on specific issues to help
improve performance.”
Increase telemarketing effectiveness, administrative ease
“With
MasterMine, call center statistics are available instantly to let me monitor
the quality of appointments by individual telemarketers. I can analyze by
telemarketer who has the highest percentage of first time sales. If a
telemarketer’s “no shows” are too high, I can listen to their calls to see if
they are being specific enough and firm enough about meeting arrangements, and
if not, train them. Some telemarketers will book appointments only for the best
sales people, which makes their results look better, when in fact, they may not
be operating as efficiently as they should be. MasterMine will show me what’s
really going on.”
“And, I save at least two to three hours each week
verifying call center production, a huge value since call center employees are
paid on production.”
Increase marketing efficiency
I
also use MasterMine to generate the most promising leads. We analyze our
user-defined fields that tell us the SIC code, the kind of company, the numbers
of employees and their average ages, the owners’ average ages and other such
information, to set appointments with companies whose profiles match those most
likely to buy. With this kind of information, we have an excellent success rate
and an 80% participation rate within our enrolled customers.
Increase operating efficiency
“Before
MasterMine, if an agent’s meeting with a prospect was cancelled, we would ask
the agent if he or she would like to reschedule that meeting themselves. They
always said yes, but typically, would never reschedule the meeting. I learned
this by having accurate stats on leads and analyzing them with MasterMine. Now
we don’t give the agents that choice. We simply rebook the appointment for
them. Given that each lost appointment costs us money, this change in
operational process alone saves us about $5000 a month.”
“Now that I know what it’s like to use MasterMine,
I feel as if I had been working with one hand tied behind my back before I had
it. I don’t just like MasterMine – it is essential to my business. If
you run a sales organization and use GoldMine as a contact management tool,
your toolbox is only half full. GoldMine is a fantastic tool, but you need
MasterMine to unleash its full potential.”
The GoldMine Solutions Partner
Joe
Cottle started Database Marketing, a GoldMine consulting business five years
ago after helping Employers’ First Choice Insurance Services use GoldMine more
effectively. Operating out of Sacramento, he serves primarily northern
California clients. Database Marketing has enjoyed a 30% growth rate over each
of the last couple of years, a testament to the services Cottle provides and
the products he recommends to his clients. “I help successful companies become
even more successful,” says Cottle. “It’s all about trust, which is why I like
to provide great solutions like MasterMine.”
5.
Marketing
Hint – New e-mail template
Our Marketing Toolkit
now includes a new e-mail template for your use, featuring quotes from the case
study above. Your can download it from www.MasterMineVAR.com/EmailText.html and send it to your
prospect base today. Our e-mail templates are designed for you to send out to
your GoldMine clients who are not yet using MasterMine, but who are ready for
an easy-to-use analysis and reporting application. Upcoming templates will
feature different aspects of MasterMine’s value, so you can continue to send
them to your clients as they come out as “drip marketing”. They will provide
you with an additional reason to make a follow-up call your client, offering a
face-to-face or web-based demo and truly valuable next-phase consulting.
6.
User
Tip of the Month – Use Scratch fields to simplify record selection
Those who use
MasterMine to segment and process their database know how powerful
“drill-through reports” can be as a GoldMine administration or mail-merge tool.
Isolate target records containing certain values using MasterMine’s dynamic
reports, then drill down and create GoldMine groups. But what if you want to
report on records NOT containing certain values (i.e. accounts with NO history
record in the past 60 days or NO custom profile record containing some
particular value.) Creating a SQL statement that isolates these accounts can be
very difficult.
Difficult, that is, unless you have a “scratch
field” in Contact2 and mark it for those meeting the CONVERSE condition. That
is, you can use your MasterMine-created GoldMine groups (of those who DO have a
certain history record or custom profile value) and GM global replace to update
your scratch field with a “marker” value. Then, using your “scratch field” as a
filtering criterion (in the “page” area of your MasterMine report) you can
easily select or de-select those with the marker in “scratch”. By breaking your
process into 2 steps, you can save hours of tricky dBase or SQL programming and
get a quick, easily understandable result!
7.
The
Word is Out! Here’s what VARs and End Users are saying-
“We think
MasterMine is a great product. We do a lot with it, and are very pleased we had
the early vision to see its value as an add-on. . . It’s a tremendous shot in
the arm for GoldMine!”
-Richard Dotson
Systems Software Solutions
8.
Conversations
with MineStein
Trace MineStein: “Uncle Alphred, are you
leaving MasterMine? I saw a new product logo the other day without your face on
it.”
Alphred P. MineStein: “Heck, No! Trace, m’boy. Some
marketing “genius” says we need a simpler image for “Web pages” – sumthin’
about maximum “pick-sels” or sum fool thing. I s’pose in mah case, “face value”
means ya don’t have ta see mah face ta know mah value!”
(Get the new logo at www.MasterMineVAR.com/MktgToolkit.html)
J Have a great day!
If you have
suggestions, comments, or questions about this newsletter, please e-mail us at Rob@MasterMineSW.com. For more information on MasterMine products and
services, call 1-877-877-7212. VAR support website: www.MasterMineVAR.com.
End User: www.MasterMineSW.com