ATTRACT: American Express

American Express was having trouble using an antiquated system to generate leads for their internal sales force until Dialogue presented a solution.

The situation
For over 10 years, American Express Merchant Services used an antiquated "mystery shopping" program to generate leads for their external sales force. While historically, leads were easier to come by, sales results were dwindling fast and field executives were becoming tired of the poor quality of the leads that they were receiving.

The solution-
Dialogue developed a new lead generation service for American Express and partnered with the field representatives to distribute the leads more efficiently. The new program called for much higher qualification criteria and a more effective hand-off to facilitate the customer sales cycle.

Qualification criteria changed to include more requirements including:

• Business Revenue Requirements
• Decision Maker Contact and Demographic Verification
• Industry Needs Verification
• In-depth Needs Analysis
• Value Sharing of Programs Available
• Appointment Setting with Identified Decision Maker at Prospect Company (typically C-Level)

The results
The results exceeded anything American Express had originally anticipated. Rather than closing leads on a typical six month sales cycle, field representatives were closing sales within two months. In fact, after one month, ROI on the program was 119% and after three months, ROI was over 500%.

"The leads are far superior to anything we have ever received before. The customer is expecting our call and the groundwork has been laid for a much easier entry and access to a decision maker with their specific needs available. You definitely get what you pay for."
- D. Church, Regional Sales Manager