Robert J Morton

Personal Project EBS Marketeer: an integrated database and communications software package for direct marketing and sales applications. After developing it as a personal project, I went on to sell this package commercially between 1985 and 1990.

Marketeer is a well specified contacts management database package which I developed during the early eighties. It includes a 400-page fully indexed on-board manual. I marketed, sold and supported Marketeer personally. I also trained the staff at its user sites explaining its purpose and where it fits within an organisation. In so doing I showed how the strict separation of the marketing function from the sales function can be advantageous within both 'supported' and 'multi-role' sales teams.

Marketeer is made up of:

• a store of information on individual contacts
• a facility for targeting groups of contacts
• a variety of communication facilities

As an aid to implementing Marketeer at user sites, I later designed, developed and produced a formal packaged project based on a generic planning chart + questionnaires.

Since Marketeer was first launched in 1981, other software producers have jumped on the sales and marketing bandwagon. Of the confusing rash of sales and marketing packages which have entered the market of late, most seem to have pre-sale visual appeal and demonstrability as their prime design brief. Marketeer's design brief always has been and shall remain pure post-sale mission performance. Marketeer is aimed at those who wish to take a calculated approach to improving the efficiency, effectiveness and cost-benefit of their sales/marketing function. It is not for those who are impulsively impressed by dazzling visuality.

At the time of writing [1992], Marketeer is operational at 20 sites in the UK with a combined total of 150 users.