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| Screen Test for a Direct Public Offering |
| Seven: Their
names, addresses, telephone numbers and some demographics are in the Company's database. |
| This is an ideal. For the banks and catalog retailers, having an
up-to-date data base was a welcome fact. Most businesses will need to find alternatives to
database marketing, and we may one day drop this test entirely, as no longer so important.
Recent share offerings have worked even without the database. Two of them, a beverage
company and a clothing designer/manufacturer, sold over eighty percent of their products
through distributors and retailers. We had only a very limited database of people who
drank or wore those products. There are ways to "profile" those nameless
customers and figure out how to reach them through selected media. It makes the process
more difficult and less predictable. On the other hand, we've learned that having the
database of affinity groups is not enough to assure a successful DPO--the other tests
still need to be met. |
| Eight: A
Company employee is able to spend half time for six months as project manager, directed by
the CEO. |
| There needs to be one person for whom the DPO is the top business
priority. Experience has shown that anything less than that will lead to slippages in the
schedule and a decline in enthusiasm for getting the job done. Our advice has always been
that the employee chosen should not be the CEO (although several successful ones have been
run just that way). Nor should it be the CFO (although other successes have been managed
that way, too.) The ideal is someone earlier in their career who works directly under, and
speaks with the authority of the CEO or CFO. |
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