Definitive Guides at Quidnunc

Marketing Work Teams way back into the middle ages of the Quidnunc era have slaved away under a feudal editorial system to produce the pearls of wisdom, which throughout the world are knows as the Definitive Guide Series for IS executives.

You have seen the fruits of their labour and indeed the guides have become essential reading at Quidnunc. How many of you have spent your first days at Quidnunc reading the 'Yellow guide' or the 'VID guide'? But it is not with the ambition of producing an arduous body of writing to occupy new Quidnuncees that we set out to add to the growing collection. Their primary aim is-you guessed it-to generate HappySales.

Young Laurence (not as young a Laurence as the one we mentioned in the last edition of The Mole) wrote the first definitive guide back in 1994. The responses from the mailing campaign offering the free guide generated a staggering 9.5 HappySales!

And that is precisely their raison-d'être. The definitive guides have since carried on being star performers-bringing in new business for Quidnunc. Even in a far more competitive market, they are still a corner stone of our lead generating activities. People who respond to the mailings are then swiftly cornered by our diligent sales team and patiently nurtured into clients.

Subsequent guides, Running Software Projects, Data Warehousing and Visual Interface Design, have so far produced 19.5 HappySales between them. So you most probably will each have worked on a project which came from one of our guides. So next time you come across Edward, Martin, Jules or Laurence give them a big pat on the back. I mean a really really big one cos they spent weeks working on them in the shadows, shuffling about, men on a mission-impossible at times-to meet the marketing deadlines and produce yet another of our definitive guides.