Numbers don’t lie – The more you know, the more certain you can be
by Dennis Dow
Everywhere you turn lately, there’s uncertainty. There’s a story, a contradictory story, a third-party viewpoint that seems to be out of left-field, all competing for your attention and all asking for action. The trouble is, with so many different feelings, thoughts, stories, actions, and avenues to take into account, it can become difficult to know what way is up, and what way is down.
This is true not just in the news, or in day-to-day life, but in business as well. For every opinion piece touting the best new ways to court customers, or the next wave of technology or marketing to bring them in the door, there’s another piece advising a different course of action. If it’s difficult to see a trend of viewpoints when they’re all over the field, it will be difficult to know the right way to move forward. In these situations, it’s best to focus on things that are basic, solid, and undeniable.
What can be glossed over by a reader, or an independent business-owner who is trying to make a living in power equipment sales and service, is that there is a universal truth out there, and an answer to every question. There are people and companies, real as ever, in need of your goods and services. There are people you already sell to, people you used to sell to that you haven’t seen in a while, and still other people who have never approached your door – but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
Numbers don’t lie. The number of people or companies in a target market, or an area, are not up for debate – 15 is 15, 300 is 300 no matter what way you look at it. The number of purchases each one makes in a given time is also not up for debate – a company that purchases $10,000 worth of goods and accessories over a year is more valuable than one that purchases $5,000 in that same stretch of time. The math there doesn’t lie either – It takes two of the lesser companies to make the revenue that one of the greater companies brings in. Therefore, you would like to find as many of the high-value customers in your area, be they current customers, dormant customers, or competitive customers, and you would like them to pay you a (revenue-driving) visit.
Sounds simple, but we all know execution is the hardest part. Before you enact a trendy marketing campaign, email reach-out or flyer circulation, you should know some more numbers: How many customers and how valuable? Where are they – Latitude, Longitude, Zips, and Addresses. Further, you might want to know some of your own numbers – which Models do I have in stock, how many should I have, and which are the most likely to sell to these high-value customers? Finally, you’ll want to know the number of days on average between purchases for a good customer – is that customer you haven’t seen for a long time enjoying their previous purchase until they come in for a new one, or have they switched to a competitor?
Then, you can start to score each customer – the highest value, most predictable, best customers will be your first target, all the way down to the ones you are not sure will ever come in. That’s yet another number. Altogether, if one zip code has a multitude of customers and potentials that are scored very highly and promise to provide a high level of value by purchasing the best mix of models, that’s where your marketing dollars and reach-outs should be targeted.
Universal truths aren’t easy to come by, and I get it, that’s a lot of numbers. There are a lot of relationships too which means a lot of math. A $10,000 customer that comes in once is not as valuable as a $5,000 customer that comes in multiple times. So, even though the most empirical and incontrovertible aspects of business revolve around simple numbers in order to find opportunity, a lot of businesses skip over this due to a lack of time, a lack of focus or a lack of data – After all, time spent doing research is time not spent selling in the moment.
Black Ink’s platform pulls the heavy lift and fills in the blanks. We calculate the areas with the best opportunities, score the customers based on how valuable, how frequent, and how long since their last purchase, and identify right up front your best courses of action to sell the most product to the best customers and keep them coming back for more. If you have a platform that lets you know, in 30 seconds and without much effort, the best intersections of customer, area, and product to drive revenue, you can spend your time making incredibly informed decisions and executing on sales that drive your bottom line. There’s no limit to what you can find when the numbers come quickly and painlessly, and the more you know, the more certain you will be.
Tabulate, calculate, analyze, identify, and action, all with one click. Not too bad in a time of such uncertainty…