SOLUTION 52
KEEP IN TOUCH WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS
Making – and keeping – contact with your customers and prospects is one of the most critical tasks in your job description. Managing customer contact systems and maintaining profit records will better place you to serve your customers, your employer, and your sales career.
MANAGING CUSTOMER CONTACT
Customer records are important. You need to know all you can about your buyers and prospects, and you need to track the history of your contacts with them. When did you last visit this customer? What were the results? Did you give them a quote? When will you hear back from them?
Just a few decades ago, salespeople recorded contact information on index cards and in a contact logbook, and finding information on contacts with a specific customer required lengthy searches through written records. Today, there are numerous customer and contact-management software programs available in the marketplace – everything from database programs to integrated network systems – that will help you to keep track of your sales performance. But these systems are only as good as the information you supply them with, and it is important to make the time to update your records on a daily basis.
the primary function of sales records is to ensure that your customers are being served as well as possible
TRACKING SALES PERFORMANCE
In sales, analysis means comparing data about one customer to others, one industry to others, one time period to others, and so on. sales analysis can help you improve your sales performance. you may discover that hours with one type of customer are more productive than days with others, and you can correlate specific products with industries or territories where they sell better.
Factors you might want to track include sales by:
• Customer
• Industry
• Time period (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually)
• Product
• Territory or location
Efficient record keeping helps you and your employer to:
• Identify which types of customer most need your efforts
• Recognize those customers that are the most profitable to your company
• Confirm the bestselling products or services within the company and within your customer group
• Assess what time periods are most productive in selling
• Analyze the similarities among unprofitable customers
• Find and fix sales process problems
if Customer A buys more from you than Customer B, Customer A will be the higher priority