Iain Lovatt helps businesses to understand their data.


His business provides marketing analytics, campaign management and customer insight to more than 400 clients across the world. Iain is an expert in B2B marketing and analytics. After 30 years at the helm of his business, he is also giving back to students at the University of the West of England as a Visiting Professor.

Iain started in business with a direct mail business called Business to Business Direct, his first venture into B2B marketing, generating sales leads for BRS Truck Rental. How did he attract prospects for BRS? Iain recalled using a technique of sending survey mailers, that Dunn & Bradstreet used. He used to generate surveys about seasonality. Truck rental is really busy around Christmas. So in September he would plan and write to ask people what trucks they might need during the October/November rush period. By the second week in December, truck rental falls off a cliff. So message timing was crucial. The call to action was to get forward bookings of trucks.

The surveys would generate a 7 to 8% response rate. Of which 20-30% would be good leads for BRS salespeople to start having good conversations with people.

Lead generation is not new.

Iain comments relationships with people. In today’s age you try and get from:

“I’ve met you, why aren’t we married?” as opposed to going through the whole courtship process. In sales we are still trying to push people to the far end, too soon. Believing their web homework is sufficient to get them there. But people still need persuading, nurturing, looking after.

Kevin mentioned a bestselling book by Ryan Levesque “Ask” getaskbook.com

Iain also mentioned another survey project for tool maker Hilti, where he wrote from the Finance Director to accounts that had not transacted in the last year, and asked them what their plans where for the next 12 months, because if they didn’t say that they needed their account kept open, they would close it and they’d have to go through the process of formally applying for a credit account again. 30% response rate. Their lapsed clients got in touch to say they had lots of jobs on and they’d need lots of stuff.

Focus – salesman tend to speak to people that are easy to talk to – cup of tea calls. Iain’s FD survey mailer was all about focusing the attention on people who DID have something to talk about. They had a need.

Surveys – we assume we know more about people than we really do AND they assume they know more about us than they really do. So a survey, a questioning technique “Ask” is a great way of starting a conversation. Because I am asking about you.

Iain noted in his early days in business that there was a lot of waste. Things that were going on that really didn’t matter. That weren’t going to pay-back in the short to medium term. So Iain started to get involved in SEGMENTATION.

Iain analysed where tenders were being successful. Iain would help focus businesses to concentrate on sectors that were more likely to deliver higher returns with higher likelihood of successful tendering.

His early business approach was he would do anything for anybody as long as they would pay. To earn money as a direct marketer. The focus was always on how does he earn money. He took that same approach to clients. As a new business the only thing that matters is earning money.

This focus on segmentation was quite revolutionary. People kicked back. They thought everyone was their audience. Not true then. Not true now. Iain used the following analogy:

“There are people who read The Sun who can afford to buy a Rolls Royce. But Rolls Royce wont advertise in The Sun, because the majority of people who read it are never going to buy a Rolls Royce. They’d advertise in The Times, because there is a higher proportion of the readership that would buy a Rolls Royce.”

It is the same today. “It doesn’t cost me anything to send them an email,

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