Surfside Group

Increase Sales with these 12 Sales & Marketing Strategies – Part 4

This is the fourth part in this article series that is covering 12 things any business can (and should) do to improve their sales and marketing efforts for more profitability.  Yes, even during a slow economy.  Especially during a slow economy!  Companies that can incorporate all 12 of these into their sales process will be stronger and better equipped to ride through any down cycle. 

The fourth item on the list says you should organize your data. (Click here to view entire list )  Where is it stored?  How is it managed?  While everything on this list of 12 is important and valuable, properly organizing and maintaining your data is perhaps one of the most important things you can do to achieve sales success.

Think of your sales data as the gasoline that drives the engine of your company.  If you use incorrect, out of date, sloppy information, your sales engine will sputter and eventually shut down.

Here are the most important things every business should do with their sales and marketing data:

1. INVEST: Invest some time and money in a sales database or  CRM (Customer Relationship Management) program.  These are available at every price point and the size of your company will be one of the critical deciding factors on how complex (expensive) your system will be.  A good CRM will make it easy to store contact information and schedule next steps (calls, mailings, meetings, etc.) to work each contact through your defined sales process which was the topic of last week's article. 

2. ACCESS: Your CRM needs to be accessible by those involved in your sales process and customer service.  Therefore, it should be stored on a server so that when anyone makes a change to a record it is instantly visible to other users.

3. PURCHASE: Use the most accurate data available.  Find a good resource for purchasing data.  This could be a data broker who will help you purchase lists containing the specific information you need about your suspects.  Or, many times you can purchase a list of members from industry associations (it's usually required that you also become a member of the association).  Your last resort should be finding data on Internet directories and trying to manually enter it into your CRM.  This is extremely time consuming and you will make more progress with purchased lists that are ready to import.

4. SET RULES:  Create a set of rules that everyone entering information must follow so that your data does not get out of control.  In other words, decide how a business and contact names will be entered and searched for within your system to avoid duplicate records.  If The ABC Company, Inc. was in your CRM, would it be available in a search as "The ABC" or as "ABC Company"? 

5. MAINTAIN:  Assign someone in your company to periodically check records to make sure they are up to date and to cull any duplicates.  When deleting records, it's important to ensure that any notes or information in the deleted record gets copied to the record that is being kept.

If you're not already taking these five important steps to organizing your marketing and sales data, it's time to do this now.  Doing so will help you and your sales team to make sure clients and prospects do not fall through the cracks.  You'll also be able to better see where the new opportunities are.  Next week, I'll address how to look at your data and see if there are ways to increase the size of your target market or to perhaps pursue a market niche you hadn't thought of in the past.