Consulting Firm Improves Marketing Efficiency and Resulting Project Revenues Using Hoover's for Prospecting, Sales and Research

• Company:ALCO Partners, LLC
• Operations:Risk Management Consulting
• Web site: http://www.ALCOPartners.com/

Company Overview

"ALCO Partners is a financial risk management consulting firm in the banking and financial services industries. We serve principally the various needs of the credit and interest rate risk management functions, including risk model identification, selection, implementation and validation, along with the supporting policies and procedures. We frequently work up-and downstream from risk measurement and management to the database and systems functions including related applications like Funds Transfer Protocols and Enterprise Risk Management. We believe that, in the risk arena, deploying only the best and most experienced risk practitioners is the most cost-effective and value-creating approach to meeting our clients' needs."

Business Roadblock

ALCO Partners provides a variety of risk management consulting services to financial institutions. ALCO's services are both diverse and highly technical, so it can be difficult for potential bank clients and ALCO to identify each other. And because ALCO's services are provided to various departments and functions within an institution, it can be difficult to identify the right contact within a bank.

Preparing for a sales call previously required information from a variety of sources to be retrieved and consolidated – an expensive and tedious process. What ALCO Partners needed was the closest thing to one-stop-shopping it could find for prospecting among and then working within targeted commercial banks. ALCO needed a quick, affordable base of business data and tools to identify candidate institutions and then focus the calling effort on the right people and departments within the institution.

"We like Hoover's because it consolidates what we need to know in a single platform and makes it easy to retrieve," said Bruce Lloyd Campbell, Principal for ALCO Partners. "Our sales cycle is shortened and our target population expanded. We're spending more time in conversation with buyers and less time searching to identify who they are."

Solution

ALCO Partners realizes its success, much like that of anyone in sales, is based on both quantity and quality, namely, "How can I identify the institutions that are my best prospects?; and the individuals in those institutions that are the logical buyers?" They needed a way to significantly increase their aperture, or funnel, and then reduce that down through filtering and qualifying, in order to reach their goal sooner.

"When I look at the services we buy, we're getting a far better return on Hoover's, and the ConnectMail powered by Jigsaw tool augments what I'm already getting," Campbell said. "By being able to access contact data for dozens of senior credit officers via the ConnectMail tool, I'm finding that my hit rate has gone up. I'm now connecting with the right people in less time. Hoover's allows me to put more institutions and more people into the funnel and knock on more doors more quickly."

ALCO Partners typically comes to Hoover's looking to identify businesspeople with certain titles and functions within banking institutions. Hoover's helps them do this quickly.

"I simply go to Hoover's, find who I'm looking for, and at the same time get a quick glimpse into what their company is about and who the decision makers are," continued Campbell. "I haven't found any other alternative that offers as much as Hoover's does."

Bottom Line

According to ALCO Partners, the true value of Hoover's is speed and access – quickly delivering the right information and tools to customers in whatever manner they choose to receive them.

"I can get the information I want faster, and more of it," said Campbell. "I'm a small business and my metric is my bank account. And I see the results."