One of our customers is a member of a National Business Owners Mastermind Group that meets several times a year. This is a letter to his group leader. The Sales Tracking Case Study of this business owner speaks for itself and is a powerful testimonial of how tracking turned a business around.
Sales Tracking Case Study
I want to share with you how, doing something as simple as tracking our marketing, tracking the cost of getting our sales, and then even taking it a step further to use the numbers to change the way we distribute our leads, has specifically helped us:
We have spent a ton of money on radio advertising with several stations over the past 10 years. There has been one particular conservative station that has brought in prospects that are typically in a good financial position (the listening audience is older and more conservative, which is our typical client).
There is one particular sales rep that is a “hard-core conservative”, and when he gets a lead from this particular station, his mind is already made up that ‘he will get the job before even meeting with the prospect’, which really helps him to sell to these prospects.
That being said, there is another rather seasoned salesperson that knows the products and services that we provide inside out and does really well with prospects from other marketing venues; however, he hasn’t done well with this particular audience.
We were at a point where we needed to consider cutting advertising on the radio.
Our company was at a point where we needed to consider cutting the advertising on this radio station because the year-to-date Sales Acquisition Cost was 39% for the team as a whole, for this station. This was too high! This was way higher than what we have budgeted/forecast for and it was clearly not working for the company!
Okay, up until then, we were distributing our leads in a round robin way (going down the line giving the next lead to the next in line) and it was decided that it is time to make a change with this.
It was announced to the sales team that the advertising on that particular station may be cut because the low sales volume from that
station did not justify the cost of advertising. There was almost a mutiny in the sales room as one sales rep felt that this station was his “bread and butter” and that he has always had the best success with these leads (at the time, his overall cost of getting the sale for this particular station was 31%).
There was some time before we would need to renew our contract with the station so we had time to work with reps to see if they could increase their performance on this.
Lead Distribution Would Be Determined By Sales Success
After some discussion, it was also decided that moving forward, the lead distribution would be based on who was successful at selling what type of lead. In other words, all paid for advertising would now be distributed based on a predetermined performance (if you are successful at selling these types of leads, they would be given to you… If not, then they would be given to those who were). As long as the sales rep are selling what is expected of them for any lead source, they would continue to get leads from that source. If you wanted to start getting a leads from a certain lead source again, you needed to increase your self-generated sales to help justify giving you leads from that lead source and again, your performance would determine whether or not the leads from that source would continue to be given to you.
We gave a couple of months for them to work their existing leads and agreed that as long as it was proven to be able to be profitable, the radio advertising for this station would continue. If not, we would not renew the contract.
Sales Increased, Cost Decreased Dramatically!
By the end of the two months, the top radio sales rep went from a 31% to a 13% cost of getting a sale for this source and was getting much closer to the company expectations (currently he is at 5.88% for this source). The higher costing radio sales person was at 51%. The leads continued to be distributed to the “lowest cost” sales rep and stopped going to the “higher cost” sales rep.
- Today the sales rep whose cost of getting a sale was at 31% is now around 5.88% and the company overall, is at 4.97%, for this particular radio station.
From Susan: Wait, did you read that? Did You Read That? Down from 39% COS Acq to 4.97%!
Also, the higher cost sales rep really began to dig in to increase his sales as the new company expectations motivated him to really work his existing leads to bring his cost down from 51% to under 10% and he has now been the front runner for getting the leads from this particular station.
- Today he is at 3.22% for this station.
In addition to decreasing the cost for getting these sales, the company also had an increase of overall sales from this station alone of around 30%!
It was fascinating to see our sales people made aware of the company expectations, and then rise to the occasion! This has been the mark of our very talented sales team and our ability to help foster this through the use of Profit Finder Pro Software (PFP).
Case-in-point: In our company, we have been tracking for years and years, however, we have not utilized the results of the tracking to help steer us as we moved forward until about 4-5 years ago.
When we started to use the numbers to help us make our decisions, we started experiencing tremendous results!!
By utilizing PFP, we have been able able to keep on top of what’s happening with our prospects and customers, increased the performance of our sales team, we have brought our marketing costs from certain sources to an acceptable level in which, all of the above, have contributed to increasing the bottom line for our company.
I feel that PFP is a huge value just used as a CRM, and the fact that you also get the awesome power of tracking, which gives you the ability to use the numbers to help you make some of your many decisions is really awesome!!
Something to think about. If you are interested, please reach out to Susan (you can reach her through the web-site). Please let her know that you were referred by me. If you have any questions on how we use PFP, please feel free to give me a call.
Maybe You’re Tracking, But Not Using the Numbers?
Unfortunately, the importance of tracking and then using the numbers is somehow lost on most small business owners. They need to know this information. It would be wonderful if you can help [get the word out to] those that have a need for it.