How the Rainmakers of Investment Recovery Could Boost Your Bottom Line

Find out how you could maximize your ROI working with specialized sales and marketing partners who bring the best of technology, online marketing, and boots on the ground expertise to your IR department.

As the investment recovery sector becomes more complex and sophisticated, so do the means of asset disposition. Oh sure, you might have some dog-eared Rolodex cards sitting on your desk of those local scrappers who would haul away anything. But at what price and lost revenue opportunities? Today, an IR professional must have the marketing tools and savvy to get top dollar for those idle 'big ticket' assets.

Harnessing your data power in surplus sales and marketing

Hmmm.... a data service for surplus sales & marketing for IR - what is it?

In a nutshell, we answer the question "How do both corporate and dealer IR folks use data processing to control their operations, save on costs and do web-based marketing?" A company such as ours provides data service to IR professionals to help them leverage their data processing for optimizing and integrating their operations. This would include inventory management, sales promotion, and internal redeployment to cut costs and increase revenue. As a web services provider to many different companies,  a specialized data service provider can deliver technologies that wouldn't make sense financially for in-house programming staffs or vendors of packaged software. We handle a company's IR data processing on our servers in the cloud, allowing them to inventory, redeploy to one site and then broadcast an email promotion for their surplus assets.

How is a data service provider different from a web-based broker, auctioneer or reseller?

They work on a commission-based system and are great channels for traditional asset disposition. We're a SaaS (software as a service) option preferred by larger because they can streamline their asset disposition both internally and externally under their own names in a cost-saving, profit gaining solution.

Explain the differences between internal and external marketing

Surplus sales and marketing really ought to be directed at two very different markets-internal and external-especially for larger organizations.  Savvy IR managers know that before you sell something on the outside, you really should be marketing it to the inside. And that makes perfect business sense because a redeployed asset can displace capital expenditures for new equipment-pure and simple.

How can you support that two-pronged marketing of idle assets?

In order to support two types of marketing efficiently and effectively, the 'what' to be marketed and the 'how' it is promoted should be handled in one place-in one data processing system. This is where IR in lose time and money -the "what and the "how" come from different sources to market to different markets. For example, some companies email spreadsheets from one location to all other locations of the assets for sell. They manage those spreadsheets in a completely different way from how they use a website to market to external buyers. And that's duplicate work. What's more, spreadsheets don't allow you to insert pictures and specs buyers need to make an informed decision.  So, an effective surplus sales and marketing strategy should capture valuable buyer-centric info in one place and then use it through key channels.

Can't ERP systems be leveraged for internal redeployment?

Many companies try to do marketing with information from their ERP systems like SAP. Those systems are really focused on accounting for the value and location of the equipment, but they don't contain marketing content the buyer needs.

What FAQs do you hear from IR managers?

"What is the reliability and security associated with having data processing support from a remote location?" Always verify that your technology partners only use hosting companies with extremely secure physical facilities and high-reliability network maintenance. Also, who are their clients? That's a big clue as to who you can trust.

What are the different ways a data service can help an IR Manager market?

One big way is through very sophisticated list management and broadcast email capacity that can reap multiple benefits. For example, it can automatically grow prospect lists based on income and past inquiries without any effort needed to add names to those lists.

And another big advantage is the ability to promote new items, price reductions or asset categories with just a few clicks.

What kinds of assets are best suited to an integrated data system?

Asset 'suitability' is the wrong question. Asset 'findability' is absolutely critical. Anything you want to market in today's world-must be described on-demand on the web...and findable on the web. Many companies have fairly primitive websites for their IR units, fed with non-marketing or ERP data. They depend on a small group of buyers who know them and will visit their website. This is not ideal for growing any business. Without SEO (search engine optimized) content, their hope of bringing in outside traffic is non-existent. That's why a data service partner can provide no-cost multiple public exposures on the web for our clients' assets to be sold.

What are some key takeaways about your area of surplus sales and marketing expertise?

• The need for internal re-deployment promotion as well as external promotion

• The need to have an integrated process including data processing systems for both internal and external promotion

• The strategy of making it cheap, easy and fast-for broadcast email and promotions

• The approach of multiple exposures on the web to funnel traffic