I was having lunch early this week with a client.  A manufacturer of household goods sold through Wal-Mart, The Bay, Zellers, etc.  A few months ago, we were asked to analyze all store locations of one of their client in comparison to their customers profile and national penetration.  We ended up delivering an analysis that was estimating the potential sales of their new line by store.  The President of my client walked into the President’s office of this major retailer confident, holding our 200 pages reports filled with charts, maps and our initial purchase recommendation and allocation (we are talking millions of dollars here).  The retailer’s President was impressed with the presentation that included our binder/findings and decided on the spot to double the initial order.

Rarely do we get that kind of feedback.  I do not want by any mean to take away anything from my client’s ability to close a sale.  My client’s President is a seasoned executive with powerful skills.  He would have closed this deal without Indicia’s study in hand!  In fact, he’s been closing deals all his life before we started to work together.  But it was gratifying to ear the impact our binder/study/findings had on the meeting.

Any similar experience out there?  Your comments are welcome.

I will be giving a training course in quantitative analysis and modeling in October to marketing executives in Montréal.  Participants will ask me what portion of their direct marketing budget they should allocate to analysis.  In other words, if I have a yearly budget of $500 000 for creative, printing, postage and lists, and want to start analyzing my data, what is a “fair” allocation of my overall budget for analysis/modeling?  A mere 2% provides $10 000, barely enough for a thorough initial analysis…  Five percent (5%) allocates $25 000 of the budget to analysis, while 10% sums up to $50 000; maybe to much?  What do you think?