Press Release
Vanick Group’s Powerful Totus™ Connects Sales Team to Clients, Prospects Seamlessly
Award-winning Sales Force Automation Tool Combines E-mail, Direct Mail, Print-on-Demand Capabilities in User-Friendly Interface
MEMPHIS, Tennessee (October 11, 2005) – The connection between a sales force and its clients and prospects is an important, dynamic and constant bond. Vanick Group’s innovative Totus empowers large sales forces and marketing departments to connect directly with their customers and potential customers through multiple communication mediums, such as email, print-on-demand, electronic greeting cards, premium fulfillment and direct mail campaigns.
“Totus is a one-of-a-kind sales automation tool and unified communication method that allows sales forces and marketing departments to simplify the entire process of reaching their target audiences,” said Jim Van de Vuurst, principal owner of Vanick Group. “Never before have all of these different communication mediums been available in one, easy-to-use interface. It’s a fundamental change in doing business.”
Research has shown that personalized marketing communications increase response rates up to 30 percent. Totus allows users to customize each communication sent to customers, increasing customer loyalty. Overall impact of personalized documents has been proven to increase and improve buy rate by as much as 74 percent.
“Because of changes, we scrapped $300,000 worth of literature last year,” said Stacey Cooper, group product manager in charge of launch for the Trauma Division of Smith & Nephew, a medical technology business specializing in orthopaedics, endoscopy and advanced wound management products. “With Totus, now we can re-brand and update with only peripheral design costs to consider. We also have the flexibility to print information just three days before a new product or technology launch to include the most up-to-date information possible.”
“Smith & Nephew is the perfect example of how Totus can be used to empower a sales force,” said Van de Vuurst. “Totus saves Smith & Nephew the often-exorbitant costs of updating educational and promotional information through its print-on-demand feature. Smith & Nephew’s costs for producing sales literature decreased by 40 percent since implementing Totus.”
Developed in conjunction with one of the nation’s largest sales forces, Totus integrates every possible sales tool into an easy-to-use program that is the first of its kind. For one client alone, more than 100,000 communication pieces flow through Totus each month, and 2,400 sales people use it to connect to 7 million contacts within its database.
Features
Totus offers effective communication tools on demand. From personalized collateral to customizable reports, Totus simplifies the sales process, resulting in real sales return.
Communications and collateral at your fingertips:
Print-on-Demand: Totus provides a comprehensive library to store your marketing collateral electronically in a central location. These materials can be accessed instantly and printed by a commercial digital print vendor to ensure the desired quality, then mailed directly to the customer or prospect.
HTML E-mail: Sales people can deliver all material in the collateral library via HTML e-mail directly to customers. Customers’/prospects’ communication preferences are also stored in Totus.
Electronic Greeting Cards: Totus’ electronic greeting cards allow your sales force to strengthen personal customer relationships through sending regular greetings on holidays, birthdays, etc.
Premium Fulfillment: The real power of Totus is the centralization of all customer communications through one application. In addition to e-mail and print-on-demand collateral, your sales force can also use Totus to send premiums directly to customers. At the click of a button, your salespeople can send t-shirts, coffee mugs, pens, etc. through Totus’ distribution channel directly to customers and prospects.
Document Aggregation: Totus allows you to choose multiple materials from the library to build a custom information package for your customer. The selected pieces are then aggregated into a single personalized document with a table of contents and sent to the customer.
Personalized Communications: Each communication sent from Totus can be personalized with customer-specific information and your contact information.
Management Tools to Ensure Accuracy and Efficiency:
Communication History/Status: Totus provides reports, by customer or prospect, that track current communication status as well as a historical view of communications sent.
Activity Management: Totus gives you the ability to schedule and manage tasks. You can capture and access every customer activity, including all communication transactions, such as appointments, dates, telephone calls, e-mails, letters and meetings. Management reporting features allow sales managers to report on all captured activity data.
Customer/Prospect Data Management: The quality and accuracy of customer data is an ever-present challenge. With your customer/prospect data directly available to your sales force, your salespeople can ensure the accuracy of the data before communications are sent.
Marketing Campaign Management: Marketing personnel can upload lists of prospects/customers into Totus for mass communications. Totus allows you to design and implement large-scale, personalized campaigns, deliver them through multiple channels, analyze their performance, and then fine-tune and modify your marketing for maximum return-on-investment.
Management Reporting: Totus offers standard reports on system usage for sales management and marketing departments to measure the effectiveness of customer communications.
Online Tutorials: Totus includes online tutorials that users can access at any time. This will minimize training efforts and costs during implementation, rollout, and for the life of the system.
Benefits
Totus’ benefits for a large sales force or marketing department are numerous. There are no printing or warehousing costs, and there is less waste as a result of Totus’ print-on-demand feature. This feature also eliminates large up-front capital investments associated with large print runs. Totus integrates with existing internal systems for access to current customer data, e-mail systems and directory services, saving valuable selling time. Totus also reduces the entire production cycle by shipping products directly to customers, again maximizing selling time. Personalized marketing, more effective documents and the ability to track customers leads to higher response rates and more highly targeted campaigns.
“Totus is the right communication at the right time to the right person, all within one unified communication method,” said Van de Vuurst.
About Vanick Group
Vanick Group is a full service information technology services provider with a proven track record of successful hardware and software implementations for private and public sector clients. Winner of both the MarCom Creative Award, part of the distinguished Communicator Awards, and the Outstanding Web site award from the Web Marketing Association, Vanick Group is receiving national recognition for its one-of-a-kind Totus. Since its founding in Memphis in 1998, Vanick Group has been providing exceptional IT services to its clients with one overriding principle: We provide information systems products and professional services of superior quality and value that best fulfill the needs of our customers.