Sales development

One of the biggest headaches of running the smaller business is to find the time to develop new market opportunities and find new customers. With this in mind we have developed two sales development programmes: the Total Sales Development programme and the Sales Lead Generation programme. With both of these programmes we actively intervene on behalf of our clients to identify new potential customers.

Total Sales Development programme (TSD) will systematically:

• open up new markets for your business
• generate pre-qualified, quality leads and enquiries
• improve marketing and business performance
• automate the process of customer acquisition

The TSD programme has 4 key stages:

1. Research and planning: working closely with clients to understand the business and explore current marketing operations to find out which markets to target.
2. Targeting: building a database of potential customers in the target market(s).
3. Direct marketing: using a range of direct marketing techniques to contact key decision-makers in the target markets. Every project is different and we are always testing different approaches which we adapt according to the results we get.
4. Continuing contact and review: keeping in constant contact, passing on enquiries, monitoring progress, assessing results and holding regular meetings to review progress.

Sales Lead Generation service (SLG):

This aims to generate a lesser number of sales leads over a more extended period of time - even a few new customers can stretch sales and estimating resources in many companies. The programme is flexible in that the number of sales leads being produced can be matched according to the resources available to service the leads. Normally our clients opt for a certain number of days per month - as little as one or two - and increase or decrease this depending on forecast business levels.

Database management:

For some clients the Sales Lead Generation service has developed to the extent that we manage their sales databases for them. This includes cleaning and enhancing records, finding new potential customers and synchronising to update the client's versions of the database.

Franchise development

The UK franchising industry is worth more than £9 billion and there are some 670 different franchises available. Many of these have sufficient 'legs' to be equally successful into another country. Together with our partner companies in Spain, the Czech Republic, Italy, Slovakia and Switzerland (for all German speaking countries) we are able to offer a full range of services to establish a franchise in these countries. These include feasibility studies, competitor analysis, establishing offices, recruiting master franchisees, adapting the franchise package to the country and representing the franchiser in that territory. More countries are being added to this network.

Patent exploitation

Patent owners are becoming increasingly aware of the value locked up in a patent and the need to exploit it before expiry. Marketing Assistance Ltd has the skills and resources to exploit the patent in the UK and abroad through its various international partners.