The Corporate Librarian

Interesting exercise the Corporate Librarian and his colleagues are going to be going through, segmenting our customer base and tailoring our “sales” approach accordingly. The first step is identifying the key influencers in the organizations we serve. Next we identify what our relationships with those influencers are like - are they very familiar with the research group and what we do, are they passingly familiar with us, have they never used research’s services before?

If an influencer is totally unfamiliar with research and what we do, we might send them a brochure with our services and contact information, or a PowerPoint presentation covering the same ground, or perhaps some sample deliverables we’ve developed for other clients.

We might follow some of the same steps with an influencer passingly familiar with research, and it’s not really necessary obviously if the influencer is already a user of research and knows what we can deliver.

The next step, regardless of the extent of the prior relationship with the influencer, is setting up a phone call with them. Some of our past approaches were more openly “sales”-oriented - “We’re Research, here’s what we can do for you.” The call is much more about listening to the influencer and understanding his or her role and what his or her needs might be. We might do some research beforehand on the influencer, in terms of their background - it’s easier for the Corporate Librarian and his colleagues because our firm often includes biographies or resumes in proposals or responses to proposals.

The goal is to build relationships with these influencers, which will hopefully have as a side-effect regular and more interesting work.

Is this an interesting and useful approach for readers of this blog?

BUSLIB continues to unearth treasures, such as a 2004 study by Amy Hartson Davis (available here as a PDF) which demonstrates that corporate libraries have higher utilization rates if they eschew the term “library” in their names. Her sample was 56 Fortune 250 libraries, and utilization rate was calculated based on estimated annual requests divided by estimated number of employees served.

Established librarians and students, how do you feel about this?

If you’re involved in providing business reference services, you really need to be on BUSLIB-L if you’re not already.

I thought I’d call out this question from the list, from Martha Rabin of VISA, since I know some people are interested in how to market library services.

We are in the process of packaging and marketing our products and
services. I am in need of unique, interesting and self-explanatory names
for some of the services we offer. For example, what do any of you call
“reference services” ? We have a service whereby we answer reference
questions and I am looking to call this something less library-like than
“Ready Reference”. In addition, we proactively create information which
folks can access on our intranet, right now I refer to this as
“Proactive Information Creation” quite a mouthful.

Have any of you done this kind of marketing of your services?

On a conference call at work today we discussed the progress of our marketing and branding efforts. With a potential clientele of over 100,000 people across six continents and consulting being a high-turnover business, you can imagine the challenges inherent in building awareness of us and the services we offer. Some of the steps we're taking:

• Developing templates for deliverables (consultant-speak for end-product, like presentations or reports) in Microsoft PowerPoint and Word, with our group's name and logo prominently displayed
• Seeking opportunities to promote our past work in existing communications
• Segmenting our customers and targeting key segments (i.e. influencers within the firm)

Do any of you face similar issues in building customer awareness? And what tips and techniques have you found helpful?