What is Your Business's Most Valuable Asset?(It's probably not what you think it is!)Which piece of your sales and marketing system is the most valuable? Is it your website? Your highly trained sales team? Is it your brand? If you said, ‘none of the above’ you would be correct. You see, although your website, salespeople and brand are important, they are not nearly as valuable as your sales and marketing database. It’s the hub of your system, yet so often we see companies treat their database like an afterthought. I know it’s not as exciting to look at as a beautifully designed website with videos. And it definitely can’t light up a room the way many sales professionals do by using their relationship building skills and outgoing personalities. But your database is where the money is. Think about it. When a sales person leaves a company, is she more concerned with sneaking out the door with a fistful of your logo’d pens or somehow (unethically!) obtaining a copy of your clients and prospects? And, which action would you consider talking with your attorney about if you realized it had happened? Your sales and marketing database is the lifeblood of your business. You don’t want it to get into the hands of your competition or to help a former employee become your new competitor, do you? Here’s another example. Have you ever had a prospect on the phone who called you but you can’t find them in the system to look at your notes about that person? Was that a frustrating experience? Did you find them in the system after the phone call and realize you could have said something differently that may have helped you have a more productive conversation? Or, have you ever wanted to send a special email to a specific category of prospect or client, but you can’t accurately sort the data? Imagine you wanted to offer 50% off all orders from first-time customers but you accidentally sent that offer to some of your existing customers? That would not do much to endear you to them or strengthen their loyalty to you. If and when you decide to sell your company, any potential buyer is going to take your database into consideration. If they see you have too many incomplete or duplicate records, the value of that data decreases along with the value of your company. If you can prove that your information is up to date, accurate, and easy to sort according to categories that are important for various campaigns and understanding trends among your prospects and customers, then you can command a higher price. So, if your data is so important to your productivity, value, and everything that effects your profitability, don’t you think it’s a good idea to begin paying more attention to your database? Here are some tips to help you improve your company’s data: 1 - Duplicates - Sort your data for duplicate records. Make sure there is only one record for each person. Obviously, you might have multiple records for a company because there may be several contacts that you work with at one company. 2 - Consistency - Decide what types of data will be recorded in certain fields. For example, if you want to search for all of your clients who have purchased XYZ from you in the past, make sure that is in a searchable field and not just written in the notes section. 3 - Accuracy - Do you still have John Jones listed as your main point of contact even though he quit that company 3 years ago and Mary Smith is in that position now? Why is he still listed there? Do you know where John Jones works now? If so, change his contact information. Think about all the ways you can categorize your data. What makes sense? What will help you and your team to manage so much information? Determine the best ways to store that information so you can quickly find it in the future. 4 - Timeliness - How long has it been since anyone entered a note into the system? With so many people using Blackberries, iPhones, etc. now, important customer data is portable and often not organized into one central system. Make it mandatory that your sales and marketing team sync their updated info into your main company database on a regular basis. Daily is not too often! This helps ensure the accuracy of your information and allows for a simple data transfer to a new phone when one gets lost, stolen or damaged. Whether you are a small start up or a large company that has an equally large database, it’s imperative to pay attention to how you collect, store and retrieve your customer and prospect data. The sooner you can begin making improvements here, the sooner you’ll see improvements in your profits. |