(5) Regularly monitor companies and their particular products.
(6) Watch trend reports about your industry. Search for patterns and possible niches.
(7) Save what you find on your hard disk for future references.
Can you get everything through the online medium? Of course not! Don't expect to find production data, production formulas, detailed outlines of a company's pension plan, or the number of personal computers in a company. Such information rarely finds its way to public databases.
Intelligence by fax —————————- Financial Times' Profile has Fax Alert. Predefine your interests using search words. Stories will be cut and sent to your personal fax number whenever they appear. Price depends on the number of characters transmitted. Other online services offer similar services.
The Bulletin Board as a sales tool ————————————————— Many companies - large and small - use bulletin board systems as a marketing instrument. Here is an example: The San Francisco-based Compact Disk Exchange (Tel.: +1-415-824- 7603) offers a database of used CD records. Members can call in to buy at very low prices. They can sell old CDs through the board or buy from other members. (1992)
Marketing and sales by modem —————————————— The Americans have a gift for this. You meet them in online forums all over the world, in person or through agents, and especially in computer oriented conferences and clubs. Their main strategy is reference selling. Make key customers happy, and make sure they tell others. In Chapter 5, I told you what happened when a member wrote about his upgrade to a 425 megabytes hard disk in CompuServe's Toshiba forum. It made me place my order with his preferred seller. One common sales strategy is to be constantly present in relevant conferences, and spend a generous amount of time helping others. This takes time. By proving competence and willingness to help, you build a positive personal profile. This profile is the key to business, information about competitors and other benefits. To drop quickly into a conference to post an "advertisement," is a waste of time. The message may be read by some, but chances are that you will be criticized (in public) for having 'polluted their environment' with a commercial message. Besides, the volume of information in the best conferences for your marketing effort is probably too high to make traditional advertisements worth the while.
Electronic mail ———————- Here is a list of other useful applications of electronic mail:
* to distribute quickly lists of important prospects to your
sales force,
* to avoid lengthy telephone conversations,
* to receive order information faster and more efficiently than
by traditional mail or fax,
* to distribute quickly reports and memos to key people all
over the world,
* to send new prices and product announcements to customers,
* to exchange spread sheets and analyses between users of
personal computers.
If this isn't enough, ask for information from the International
Business Network at 70724.311@compuserve.com (or, at 70724,311 on
CompuServe).