Relationship Marketing

When Andrea Westmeyer wanted to apply more processes to the highly customized work of her marketing firm, she looked outside the marketing world to discover a unique viewpoint. The BIZ’s Mike Colwell provided valuable insight that helped Andrea build a robust process to deepen and extend the firm’s connection to its clients so they can capture additional business.

“Mike comes from a technology background and offers an interesting point of view in a room full of marketers,” says Andrea Westmeyer, president of Relationship Marketing, an Urbandale, Iowa–based firm. “We saw an opportunity to add some valuable processes, and Mike encouraged that. When we hired a New York City firm to help with a value driver assessment, they confirmed many of Mike’s insights and recommendations.”

Colwell helped Relationship Marketing focus on processes that are common in technology and software firms, including standard operating procedures, strategic selling and customer life cycle management.

“We’ve always done very well in the acquisition of new clients, but Mike was able to help us sell more strategically by introducing us to a more sophisticated selling system that has been successful in large consultative companies,” Westmeyer says. “It helped us learn to identify all of the decision makers, influencers and coaches within an organization so that we’re less likely to be blindsided during the sales process.

“After the sales process, those individuals may become client contacts during program operation, and now our client services team gets valuable insight up front about these client contacts and can build deeper relationships that strengthen our connection with our clients,” Westmeyer says.

Relationship Marketing employs 25 people and provides data-driven, multichannel marketing programs for clients such as Abbott Laboratories, Bristol Myers-Squibb, Schering Plough, Alcon Laboratories, Time Warner Cable, Granite City and AT&T.