Our Services

Premier Prospection offers a wide range of services to fulfill all your requirement. We are also flexible enough to specifically tailor individual service packages to suit any needs you may have. Contact us to find how we can help benefit your business.

Appointment setting and lead prospecting
We can either work in conjunction with any existing sales force or in-house New Business facility you have or work solely on your behalf.

Three Distinct Approaches

There are three distinct approaches for you to consider:

  1. we work as a ‘virtual’ in house person, e.g. Joe Bloggs of client x – this is the more traditional way of prospecting. It creates a seamless transition enabling one of our team members to represent you they were an in-house team member or employee.
  2. We make the outbound calls as an independent new business or business development consultant on behalf of client x. The main advantages to this approach are that it enables us to get a full insight into what is happening at an organisation helping in the qualification process rather than simply selling client x. However, more importantly it allows us to provide ‘warts and all’ feedback on how you have performed in a pitch or tender situation.
  3. We simply phone as Premier Prospection – this has various advantages particularly if we are chasing trade press stories. It enables us to confirm whether reviews, launches Esc have been accurately reported and then only send you in to meet the prospect when such a lead or brief is ‘live’.

Once through to the decision maker

Once we have ascertained who the correct decision maker is, we then gather, where possible vital information such as:

  • e-mail addresses (very useful for future contact and marketing activity)
  • direct phone lines
  • mobile numbers
  • names of secretaries/PA’s
  • any other contact within the organisation that may be worth approaching and who is a decision maker or budget holder we then make the pitch on your behalf using one of the 3 methods described above this should take the form of Matching the prospects needs and requirements with the service of our clients is an area we take very seriously. Indeed, once a dialogue has been made with the prime prospect’s decision maker, it is essential to answer as many as possible of the following questions which can be tailored to your specific needs:
  1. does all marketing activity take place ‘in-house’ or do they use external suppliers, if so whom?
  2. is there just the one incumbent? If so who?
  3. is there a roster?
  4. if they use external suppliers, how often do they review, annually, biannually, statutory or ad-hoc?
  5. are they prepared to divulge the annual budget?
  6. are they prepared to reveal the name of their existing suppliers/incumbent? This always gives an idea of their ambitions terms of budget if they wont disclose the actual spend.
  7. are the current arrangements ‘set in stone’?
  8. are there any International / Global alignments to consider?
  9. would they be interested in seeing a credentials document, examples of creative work, the presentation of ideas, a demonstration?
  10. Is there anyone else within the organisation who may have a budget, worth seeing?

We confirm the meeting time and place there and then and inform them that you will either, send a confirmation letter or e-mail or telephone them prior to attending the meeting.

After sales service and evaluation

Often before agreeing to the initial ‘credentials’ or introduction the prospect may request further literature about your core services, products and wish to see case studies etc. – we will note such requests for you and e-mail out PDF documents on your behalf or sent you by e-mail or fax requests for further information.

All information requiring a swift response is sent over to you immediately. All other details of dialogue made is sent in report format which takes the form of a weekly synopsis, fortnightly status report in Excel, txt or csv formats and then a monthly face to face status meeting

Each prospect should be placed into one of the following classifications:

  1. Meeting – a date arranged there and then
  2. Warm lead where the prospect expresses an interest but not for a couple of weeks or month or so
  3. Actionable lead – normally when the prospect requests further information, a letter, brochure, examples of creative work etc. before agreeing to a meeting
  4. Not interested – happy with incumbent, do it all in house, will keep details on file, will contact if interested.

All this information should be stored on the data base and constantly updated.

Being in the right place at the right time!

At PP we never regard a ‘prospect’ as being totally dead. What is a ‘Not Interested’ today can easily give a buying signal in 3, 6, 9 or 12 months or even further down the line. Our constant approach ensures that we are always “in the right place at the right time”.

When handling New Business from cold, it is highly imperative to strike a balance between being persistent and tenacious being a nuisance or a pest, our extensive experience in this market enables us to achieve this delicate balance.

PP has always advocated maintaining a constant ongoing dialogue with ‘prospects’ on our clients behalf so that if ever there is a change in circumstances we are in the right place at the right time. It could be that an incumbent has resigned or there has been a change in personnel etc. This scenario can only be achieved by regular contact with that specific prospect which results in “being in the right place at the right time” and being able to act on our clients behalf.

At Premier Prospection we make a concerted effort to always follow up every credentials demonstration, pitch or tender with our clients and are always looking for ideas and suggestions to further improve and streamline the process.

Ambulance Chasing– Strategic v Tactical ratio

This is a highly specialized service that we can provide. It takes the form of ‘tactical’ Prospection and lends itself best to approaches 2 or 3 i.e. we act as an independent consultant or as Premier Prospection. Here we would scan and trawl the trade press and attempt to get you onto ‘pitch lists’ or tender opportunities which can often be almost close to completion. Here we need to act swiftly, if we can persuade the prospect to see or include you on the pitch list we then often need to send info, show reels, press packs, creds documents IMMEDIATELY, often getting them biked over the same day.

It is important to point out at this point that ambulance chasing or ‘tactical prospection’ should only make up 20-30% of the New Business ratio. It shouldn’t be carried out instead of or to the detriment of ‘strategic prospection’ which entails building a database of your target audience and tracking them over time, thus finding out about review dates well in advance of any pitch situation!

Database construction, development and validation

Here we build a ‘wish list’ normally consisting of 250-300 ‘prospects’ that fit the perfect profile that you give us. There are several ways we can assist you here:

  • Clean and validate any existing database(s) that you may already be using (this is often a good starting point)
  • Provide you with a list (we have a database of approx. 30,000 contacts made up from over 30 different market sectors)
  • Tailor make bespoke lists on your behalf
  • Advise you as to the most cost effective ways of purchasing a list (or do it for you)

All information will be provided to you in standard file formats and is yours to keep at the end of any campaign.

It goes without saying that it is of paramount importance to have an up to date database which is priceless for any subsequent or ongoing sales & marketing campaign

Market research projects

We have in the past undertaken extensive Market Research projects both internal and external. Indeed, in the past we have project managed campaigns on behalf of our client’s client’s with large corporate organisations including Guinness, Cisco and Citadines Aparthotels.

Conferences, seminar and special on-off functions and events

Conferences, Seminars and Special one-off promotional events have in recent times become an increasingly popular method or means of communicating with either your sales force, clients or target audience and are a vital aspect of your organisations PR. Here again we have experience of organizing ongoing or one-off events for our clients or on behalf of their client’s.

Here we would:

  • Follow up invitations
  • Confirm a list of delegates/attendees – this can be done by phone and/or e-mail
  • Identify and note any key issues/questions they would like to bring up at the conference or seminar