Great salespeople listen more than they speak.  By “tuning in”, they learn learn, understand and appreciate what motivates people to buy.

At Prolifiq, we place high value on listening. It is an element of our culture that consistently ranks in the top 2 attributes on surveys of our customers.

So, we’ve been listening. Here’s what we know from our Life Sciences Good Promotional Practices (GPP) initiative (4 months post launch), in rank order.  If we didn’t get it right, please let us know – we’re all ears. 

1) The Digital Dilemma – first movers are companies that have made considerable investments in converting content and building “digital” libraries that salespeople and customers “go to” to get content. A classic “pull” mode of content distribution.  The “dilemma”: salespeople and customers don’t use them. Why? Because it requires them to “do” something – namely navigate to a site, then search and find the information they need.  Then, because the systems don’t “cover the last mile” – distribution - sales users have to pull the content out of the library and find a way – usually email, to get the content to their audience.  These companies see our mobile applications, and quickly conclude that coverage of the last mile with a delivery and tracking application resolves the dilemma.  Now users can “push” at the time of need.   Gartner suggests this is the preferred solution for delivering content to and from mobile users (see: “Appartgeist Part II: Gartner and the Mobile Web”). This topic is discussed in our most recent whitepaper: "Good Promotional Practices (GPP): Are You Ready?".

2) Brand Projection – most companies struggle with a consistent “brand” presentation to and through their sales forces and sales channels. This is exacerbated when assimilating people through an acquisition. Our customers find us to be an effective and efficient way to solve this problem and ensure the brand message is conveyed in all daily electronic customer communications.

3) Compliance – our Good Promotional Practices/Good Reprint Practices content management and workflow functions are often what first captures a customer’s attention. FDA prosecutions and settlements have galvanized companies’ awareness of the need for sales and marketing compliance functionality. Our customers find that our content management, revision level control, approval workflows and electronic communications history record (eCHR) ensure their employees’ behavior matches corporate intent and compliance with regulations.

4) “Chatter patterns” – our Customer Conversations Dashboard provides unprecedented visibility into who is talking with whom; about what; when; with what content; and how customers interact with this content. Our customers find this advances progress towards a unified “closed loop marketing” (CLM) methodology – including front-line sales activity – that enhances message relevance, builds customer intimacy and helps optimize marketing content spend.

I find several things interesting about this ranking: item #2 is the primary value proposition our first customer recognized and embraced when buying from us; item #1 was the primary motivator behind the development of our product suite, so we often – and incorrectly – take it for granted. Item #3 is the core of the capabilities we specifically developed and fine-tuned for the Life Sciences industry. Item #4 is something we first deployed in Life Sciences; however, we know it applies to all of our customers and can be viewed as the “holy grail” of marketing.

We have also heard several requests for enhancements to our applications. We are studying them, understanding their implications, developing business cases and modeling, and we are prioritizing their release timelines. Not all of them will make the list; however, we will continue to write about these in upcoming posts.

Thank you to all who share your daily experiences, buying processes, and feedback with us – your feedback is invaluable. Keep pushing and pulling us – I assure you we will continue to respond.

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