Business Analytics for Sales and Marketing Managers: How to Compete in the Information Age

258 Pages·2011·1.52 MB·English

by  Gert H. N. Laursen

Business Analytics
for Sales and
Marketing Managers
Wiley & S AS Business Series
The Wiley & SAS Business Series presents books that help senior - level managers with
their critical management decisions.
Titles in the Wiley & SAS Business Series include:
Activity - Based Management for Financial Institutions: Driving Bottom - Line Results by
Brent Bahnub
Branded! How Retailers Engage Consumers with Social Media and Mobility by Bernie
Brennan and Lori Schafer
Business Analytics for Managers: Taking Business Intelligence beyond Reporting by Gert
Laursen and Jesper Thorlund
Business Intelligence Competency Centers: A Team Approach to Maximizing Competitive
Advantage by Gloria J. Miller, Dagmar Brautigam, and Stefanie Gerlach
Business Intelligence Success Factors: Tools for Aligning Your Business in the Global Economy
by Olivia Parr Rud
Case Studies in Performance Management: A Guide from the Experts by Tony C. Adkins
CIO Best Practices: Enabling Strategic Value with Information Technology, Second Edition
by Joe Stenzel
Credit Risk Assessment: The New Lending System for Borrowers, Lenders, and Investors by
Clark Abrahams and Mingyuan Zhang
Credit Risk Scorecards: Developing and Implementing Intelligent Credit Scoring by Naeem
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Customer Data Integration: Reaching a Single Version of the Truth , by Jill Dyche and Evan
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Demand - Driven Forecasting: A Structured Approach to Forecasting by Charles Chase
Enterprise Risk Management: A Methodology for Achieving Strategic Objectives by Gregory
Monahan
Executive ’ s Guide to Solvency II by David Buckham, Jason Wahl, and Stuart Rose
Fair Lending Compliance: Intelligence and Implications for Credit Risk Management by
Clark R. Abrahams and Mingyuan Zhang
Information Revolution: Using the Information Evolution Model to Grow Your Business by
Jim Davis, Gloria J. Miller, and Allan Russell
Manufacturing Best Practices: Optimizing Productivity and Product Quality by Bobby Hull
Marketing Automation: Practical Steps to More Effective Direct Marketing by Jeff LeSueur
Mastering Organizational Knowledge Flow: How to Make Knowledge Sharing Work by
Frank Leistner
Performance Management: Finding the Missing Pieces (to Close the Intelligence Gap) by
Gary Cokins
Performance Management: Integrating Strategy Execution, Methodologies, Risk, and
Analytics by Gary Cokins
The Business Forecasting Deal: Exposing Bad Practices and Providing Practical Solutions by
Michael Gilliland
The Data Asset: How Smart Companies Govern Their Data for Business Success by Tony
Fisher
The Executive’ s Guide to Enterprise Social Media Strategy: How Social Networks Are
Radically Transforming Your Business by David Thomas and Mike Barlow
The New Know: Innovation Powered by Analytics by Thornton May
Visual Six Sigma: Making Data Analysis Lean by Ian Cox, Marie A Gaudard, Philip J.
Ramsey, Mia L. Stephens, and Leo Wright
For more information on any of the above titles, please visit w ww.wiley.com .
Business Analytics
for Sales and
Marketing Managers
How to Compete in the
Information Age
Gert H.N. Laursen
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Copyright © 2011 by Gert H.N. Laursen. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
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ISBN 978-0-470-91286-7 (hardback); 978-1-118-03036-3 (ebk);
978-1-118-03037-0 (ebk); 978-1-118-03038-7 (ebk)
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xiii
Chapter 1: Introduction. ....................................................................1
Chapter 2: Identify What You Want to Achieve: The Menu
on a Strategic Level ......................................................19
Chapter 3: Lead Information for Identifying Valuable
Customers: The Recipe .................................................41
Chapter 4: Lead Information: What You Need to Know
before Launching New Acquisition Activities .............67
Chapter 5: Lead Information: What You Need to Know
before Launching New Sales Activities .....................107
Chapter 6: Lead Information for Customer Retention ................143
Chapter 7: Working with Lag Information ...................................179
Chapter 8: Working with Learning Information: The Recipe ......199
Chapter 9: Case Study of a Retention Strategy ..........................215
About the Author 235
Index 236
v

Preface
This book examines my favorite area: customer intelligence and ana-
lytics. I am no stranger to this fi eld; I have been doing this for years,
in the beginning passively delivering what I should, but over time
growing more and more confi dent. In the beginning I was delivering
ad hoc reports; in the end I was producing the information strategies
that fueled successful company turnarounds.
At the start of my career in customer intelligence and analytics, I
used phrases like these: “ Information is a strategic asset,” “ The techni-
cal part of business intelligence is the easy part,” “ competing on ana-
lytics, ” “ It is not about IT, it is about decision support. ” Because these
terms all seemed like useful buzzwords to me, I used them. I still use
these phrases today, but now I understand them. They are more than
hot air— they mean something, and they are confi rmed facts. I hope
that by reading this book and using it actively, you will come to the
same conclusion.
I was once a national training manager for an analytical company
and the courses developed by my predecessor were in ANOVA, regres-
sion, neural networks, and different types of software. We had sales-
people who would call customers and ask them whether they would
like to buy a course in how to do regression or something else. This
was a challenging assignment. If the prospective customers were
already knowledgeable about the subject, they would not buy; if they
did not know the topic, the salesperson could not explain what it
could do for them. So we changed the way we offered the courses by
vii
viii ▸ PREFACE
providing stats for salespeople, stats for marketing people, web statis-
tics, stats for healthcare, and so on. Suddenly prospective customers
would know what they could use it for even though they still would
be trained in regression, ANOVA, and neural networks.
The purpose of this book is the same. We start with what you
are trying to achieve, which typically has to do with what your
company or functional strategy tell you to do. Then we look into
whatever means you have available. Based on this, we discuss what
data to use, which analytical methods to consider, and how to imple-
ment the technical solution in a way that improves your business
processes — how to create value. This book does not focus on algo-
rithms and how they are derived; we leave that to the analysts and
their software. Our focus is on business processes and how you can
improve them.
If, like me, you are a pragmatic person, you should read Chapter
9 , which is a case study on how to use customer analytics. This case
study will show you what customer analytics can do; it is not about
technology and hardware but about creativity and sound business
understanding.
STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK
This book is written to be both a menu and a cookbook with a series
of recipes. The menu presents the different business opportunities
that can be enabled through customer analytics. You can read this
menu or use it as a basis for recommendations to decision makers,
who then, at a strategic or functional level, can point out which activi-
ties should be included as future projects. The menu can therefore
also give you an overview of strategic opportunities that can be enabled
by customer analytics.
Recipes are also included in this book. These recipes provide a
more detailed description of what you should consider at an opera-
tional and project level. You can hand the relevant recipes over to the
project manager or team members in charge of realizing the selected
activities. In this way these people will have a fi rst draft of the