How We Do It

Intelligence Acquisition

A motion control corporation contacted DDR with an urgent need for market intelligence. With a list of existing distributors and end users, the DDR team identified the key decision makers, engaged with them to learn their:

  • Buying patterns
  • Vendor selection criteria
  • Product distribution
  • Brand preferences
  • Selling strategies
  • Growth projections
  • Pricing predictions

Within 4 days, DDR had developed a Corporation Profile of likely new partners, developed the script, held conversations with 50% of the targets and delivered a comprehensive analysis—Pulse of the Market, to the client.

This detailed market analysis provided invaluable data for the client’s sales team, allowing them to most effectively gain new opportunities.

“The information you delivered was extremely impressive, timely, and expedited the critical decisions being made.”

 Acquisition Due Diligence

Before making the decision to move forward with a major acquisition, a diversified holding company needed solid due diligence to validate their perceptions of the targeted industry. DDR Communications spoke with over 50 industry experts to collect:

  • Market growth predictions
  • Technology trends and disruptions
  • Evaluation of market erosion
  • Industry process improvements

Within four weeks, a comprehensively thorough analysis provided senior management with intelligence that allowed critical decision making, enabling the client to secure a competitive advantage in the market.

Competitor Analysis

You’ve gained a client for one phase of their process, but they chose to go with a competitor for the rest of their needs. How do you align yourself with their requirements to prevent the loss of valuable business? How do you gain that objective perspective that shows what things you’re doing well, and areas where you’re falling short? Understanding how your competition is positioning themselves in the marketplace is critical to growing your business.

Mapping the Marketplace

DDR Communications creates a map of your market’s landscape. We talk to all the key players to develop the most detailed picture of what the end-user wants. During product development, this intelligence tells you what features and benefits the end-user is looking for, increasing your efficiency by allowing you to strategically incorporate those elements from the outset.

Your map also enables you to understand how to most effectively position your product, price competitively, and secure a competitive advantage in the marketplace. We also speak with the entire distribution channel to determine the key perceptions of each manufacturer in your industry. This invaluable intelligence allows you to overcome inherent product launch challenges, such as achieving your value over cost goals.

Market Knowledge

As you enter a new market, to be competitive, it’s critical to know what competitors are already there, how are they serving the market, and how they are positioning their products.

When decisions are made based entirely on internal predictions and perceptions, you risk entering the market without the necessary competitive advantage to ensure your goals are met. DDR Communications talks to partners throughout your industry to provide deep-penetrating intelligence that enables you to make strategic decisions upstream that result in a strong market presence.

Product/Service Development

Commercial Product Development

When your product is ready for commercial development, DDR Communications will use its extensive contacts to listen to the marketplace to determine the market potential of your product, rate of adoption, and identify key obstacles to overcome. This in-depth industry analysis gives you the critical insight necessary to make key implementation decisions from a uniquely well-informed vantage point.

Pricing Strategies

Pricing your product correctly is an integral component of reaching your sales goals. How do you know you’re pricing strategy is competitive? Are your internally-held perceptions of the marketplace providing you with a correct assessment?

Before you set pricing, DDR Communications will get you the critical information you need to establish a value that gives you a competitive edge. We will create a target list for the industry, create a script and conduct interviews to provide you with the most accurate, timely insight possible. This intelligence will allow you to create your most effective pricing strategy.

Involving the Customer

Before you launch your product or service, DDR Communications will engage with your customers to determine their individual needs, design features they’re looking for, and what they like and don’t like about your product. This foresight gives you the competitive advantage to tailor your product or service to dovetail perfectly with their unique needs, giving a critical competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Are you about to launch a product that will render existing products obsolete? DDR Communications will talk to your customers to learn what their wants and needs are–ensuring a smooth product introduction.

Building Awareness

You’ve launched your product or service and now you need to strategically build awareness, or maybe your product is already in the marketplace but sales have flattened and you’re looking for growth.

DDR Communications can assist with generating product awareness through such tools as developing and leading industry seminars that expose select end users and decision-makers to your product or service in an interactive, engaged environment. This approach has a proven track record of creating loyalty by involving users in the process and ensuring their needs are incorporated into design.

We also conduct professional introductions and ongoing education with key decision-makers in your industry about the variety of service options you offer, keeping you top of mind for expanded opportunities with new and existing clients.

Data Management

So, you’ve done your research and your sales group has qualified sales opportunities. You’re sitting on a wealth of data, but now what? How do you translate that information into best practices, informed decisions and closing sales?

Target List Development

Optimizing your targeted list is critical to the outcome of every project. Whether you are using your in-house customer list, a researched list, or a purchased list, DDR Communications will offer our expertise every step of the way. Communicating with key decision makers maximizes efficiency and shortens the sales cycle.

Target List Profiling

DDR Communications goes through your target list to weed out unqualified leads, according to your Target Persona that we create at the outset. This perfected approach yields consistent results that look like this:

15-20% of your list will have near term sales development opportunities

25-30% are your target audience with future well-defined purchase intentions

30-35% require further education and a consistent nurturing

10% should be removed from further contact lists

Nurturing the Relationship

Accelerating profitable revenue growth requires building a strong pipeline of potential new customers. Once a target is identified as a potential future buyer through the lead qualification process, it now becomes critical to educate, inform and keep in contact to build a business relationship. People buy from people they are familiar with who have taken the time to understand their business, their needs and their goals.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

How are you managing your customer relationship database?

Is your sales team keeping their own contact information isolated?

Have you lost valuable market share when key staff members leave?

Do you have a centralized, accessible CRM database?

Customer relationship data is too mission-critical to reside on one person’s device, or to not be organized for maximum efficiency. DDR Communications can interface with and populate this valuable information directly onto your proprietary CRM system.

Whether you’re using GoldMine, Salesforce, ACT, Excel, or any other platform for your data management, we will sort through your incoming CRM data, organize it for efficiency, and load it into your shared system.

We work with most clients to facilitate the set-up, advancement and ongoing administration and customer nurturing of company-wide CRM solutions

Market Development

Persona Creation

  • How well do you know your customer?
  • What do they really want?
  • Why do they buy?
  • What moves them from apathy into action?
  • What can you do to get them to decide in your favor?

DDR Communications believes that building an accurate, actionable persona of your customer needs to be more than just pretty pictures and PowerPoint bullets. We utilize a data-driven approach to show you how your buyers think and behave when they consider solutions—like yours, for their needs.

Persona creation has become an increasingly important tool for giving decision-makers the strategic insight necessary to make key decision for driving a business forward in a competitive environment. DDR speaks to the marketplace, gathering key intelligence to create a persona of the buyer you want to work with.

Lead Qualification

Your time is valuable. With the fluidity of the ever-changing marketplace, you need a nimble sales team that can adjust and adapt to capture and grow opportunities before they are lost to the competition. DDR Communications brings to bear an array of tools that deliver qualified sales opportunities.

This go far beyond lead follow-up. We make a professional introduction of your company to key decision-makers. We then facilitate in-depth conversations with key decision-makers who are ready to listen, resulting in an acceleration of your sales cycle and delivering critical time-management solutions to your channel distribution.

Many of our business partners initially engage with DDR to help them find new business through lead qualification and company profiling. We identify the key decision maker(s), engage in a conversation about their current application needs, who they currently buy from, future purchase intentions, critical buying factors, project timetable, volume potential, budget approval, and pertinent information for sales to follow.

Open Door Sales Opportunities (ODSO)

DDR Communications works closely with your sales team to take the information we capture and populate it directly into your team’s database. This allows your team to move nimbly through the marketplace, strategically and efficiently capturing new business.

This expertise enables us to deliver a manageable flow of open door sales opportunities for our clients’ dealers, distributors and direct sales team which can then be guided to final closure. We bring ODSOs with qualified decision-makers that have an identified purchase intention and budget allocation in place, allowing maximum efficiency of your sales team.

Persona Creation.