By The Numbers - Totally Missing the Boat

I had an interesting conversation with another person yesterday. Bless her heart, she is trying to get her business cohorts to understand the importance of tracking, and all the numbers she is showing them are numbers that she has found to be important to the business; however, in further discussion I could see clearly that she is totally missing the boat on what numbers to track!

The reason I called was for something totally other than tracking, but somehow we got on that subject. Imagine that, since tracking is what I typically spend my days and nights trying to teach people!

Anyhow, I asked her what numbers she was tracking, and she said things like ZIP codes they work in and types of jobs they do. Sure, those are important, too. Then I asked if she is doing anything to track where the leads are coming from and what percent of sales is going directly to marketing. Her response was, "Oh, they would never understand that! They do not even understand the numbers I'm showing them!"

My response to her? "Show the owner. He understands the money dropping out of his wallet."

WINNERS KNOW THEIR NUMBERS!

Susan

By The Numbers - Tracking Marketing ROI

I just spent a good portion of the day today calling on businesses that have permanent displays set up in a local show room that reminds me of a home show minus the salespeople. The concept is great in that homeowners can wander around without feeling pressured by sales.

The reason for my calls to the business owners was to find out whether or not the display is giving them a return on their investment. Surprisingly many of them had only gut feelings and could not answer a definite yes or no. In fact, several said straight out that they do not track, so they can't say for sure, but they think that maybe yes. Others said straight out that they do not believe they get many sales, but they get a lot of calls anyhow.

Wow. We have said it before and we say it again, WINNERS KNOW THEIR NUMBERS! How can you manage something you can't measure?

Just before I started closing down my computer here, I looked through my email to see what I still had to answer today, and found this interesting article on tracking Marketing ROI. Obviously, we have a software product to offer that tracks all of this, so we don't promote the tedious Excel sheets, but if you are not going to use a software program that gives you the analytics you need, by all means, at least start with an Excel sheet or two or three or four or seven... Whatever you do, track!

I wish you great success!

Susan