Is the Economy Slowing? How to Create New Critical Sales.

Weakening economic indicators have stopped business owners and sales managers in their tracks. They are taking a step back in order to revisit their sales and marketing strategies for 2020. Analyzing two years’ worth of data from the Business Confidence Index, it indicates that the economy has consistently trended downward month after month.

Often companies respond to economic uncertainty by cutting programs, reducing marketing headcount and increasing pressure on sales to perform. This type of action can be in direct conflict with bottom-line revenue.

When a heightened level of uncertainty, there are two approaches to consider:

Current Customers

There’s no better time like today to reinforce the commitment you have to your customers and they have to you.

1. Identify top performing customers (frequency in purchases or usage), and a middle tier performing customers (those that buy, but have the potential to purchase even more). You can use the expertise of marketing and sales to help gather the information.
2. Send personalized communications, calling efforts, and on-site visits to show a consultative approach. How can you help improve their business with what you know and with your products and services?
3. Are there other departments or divisions of the business that can use your products and services? Do you know who they are? You can ask your customer, but many times they won’t know the answer. However, they will refer you if they know who the right person is. So how can you get the names and contact information of key contacts in the other division or departments?

Use SalesLeads’ Target Account Sales Intelligence. The system will help you acquire the information you need. Once you get their names, titles and contact information, go to the customer and ask if you can use their name as an internal reference, and if they’d be willing to make a call on your behalf.

Acquiring New Customers

It seems impossible to acquire new customers with the threat of an economic downturn. There are some critical strategies you can use to help keep the new customer funnel at profitable levels.

1. Review the sales funnel for each of your sales reps in order to get a more accurate understanding of each potential new customer. Identify weak areas, and use the ‘war room’ approach to strategize. Be sure to include marketing to help reinforce the message with the various channels. This can be a way to further customers down the sales cycle.
2. Use SalesLeads’ Project Reports. SalesLeads’ researchers uncover sales and marketing intelligence on companies that are planning to relocate, expand, renovate or modernize their equipment. These identified projects are exactly what is necessary to begin the sales cycle. Again, be sure to include marketing to create a strategy and program to keep in front of prospects especially if it’s a long(er) sales cycle. One of the best ways to understand the quality of the Project Reports is to open a free account.
3. Keep the multi-channel lines of communications consistent to your prospects. If you are emailing or mailing, implement the targeted campaign in small batches. Personalize the communications and allow sales to follow up on some or all of those that were sent. It’ll make for a multi-touch scenario, which will help drive a conversation with the prospect.

If you’re interested in learning more about these subjects, let us know at [email protected]. If you’re ready to give our project reports or market intelligence a try, open a free account to get started.

9 Important Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for Companies in the Material Handling Industry

Are you tracking the right key performance indicators (KPIs)? Lots of material handling companies such as supply chain and logistics companies pay little or no attention to KPIs. Instead, they focus their time and attention strictly on generating sales. While sales volume itself is a KPI, there are several other KPIs that can help you create a more effective, as well as successful, material handling company. So, what KPIs should you track for sales and marketing exactly?

#1) Average Cost Per Lead

As the name suggests, average cost per lead is a KPI that reveals how much money your company spends to acquire leads. The cost of a lead can vary depending on countless factors. With that said, it's not uncommon for companies in the material handling industry to have an average cost per lead of $5 to $50. The only way you'll know how much money your company spends on leads is to track average cost per lead. But…be sure to also track the origin of the lead. That will help you to determine where to make your investment.

#2) Cost of Customer Acquisition

Not to be confused with cost per lead, cost of customer acquisition reflects how much your supply chain or logistics company spends to acquire customers. Leads, of course, are only valuable if you're able to convert them into customers. By tracking the cost of customer acquisition, meaning the cost of the sales cycle, you'll know how much money your company spends, on average, to acquire new customers.

#3) Customer Retention Rate

While speaking of cost of customer acquisition, statistics show that it costs five to 25 times more money to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing customer. Therefore, it's a good idea to track your customer retention rate. This KPI shows the percentage of customers who stay with your company during a given period. If 800 out of 1,000 customers stayed with your supply chain company, for instance, last year, your supply chain's customer retention rate for that year would be 80%.

#4) Customer Lifetime Value

How much money does a typical customer spend over the course of his or her professional relationship with your company? Known as customer lifetime value, it's an important KPI for the material handling industry. Not all customers make a one-time purchase. You'll probably discover some customers make multiple purchases over time. Customer lifetime value is the average amount of money a customer spends with your company. This can also reveal buying patterns, which can be useful to proactive communications with the customer as well as forecasting revenue.

#5) Conversion Rate

Arguably, one of the most important marketing and sales KPIs is conversion rate. Of course, conversion rate is the percentage of leads or prospects whom you are able to convert into customers. You can track this KPI per marketing or sales channels. If you send 500 emails that result in 50 new sales, the conversion rate of your email campaign is 10%. On the other hand, if you call 500 leads, which generates 100 new sales, the conversion rate of your calling campaign is 20%. Conversion rate reflects the effectiveness of a marketing or sales campaign.

#6) Average Order Value

Another important KPI to track is average order value. Average order value is the average amount of money customers spend when making a purchase. Some customers will purchase more products or services than other customers. Furthermore, a customer may purchase multiple units of a particular product or service. You'll have a better understanding of how much money customers spend and you can target products and/or services down the road.

#7) Social Media Engagement

Social media engagement can include any form of "action" taken by a user. On LinkedIn, this may include likes, comment, following or how many viewed your profile. On Twitter, this may include likes, comments and retweets (which are essentially shares). Ideally, your B2B company's social media engagement should grow, which indicates that more people are talking about it on social media networks.

#8) Cold Calling Response Rate

Assuming you use cold calling in your company's outreach strategy, you should track your cold calling response rate. This KPI reflects the percentage of contacts whom you are able to reach with cold calling. If you cold call 100 leads and prospects but only reach 10 of them on the line, your cold calling response rate is 10%. Like all other KPIs listed here, you should strive to increase your company's cold calling response rate. If it's too low, you won't generate positive results from the amount of time and resources that you invest into cold calling.

One of the most effective ways to improve the KPI is the use Project Reports from SalesLeads. The Project Reports are identified projects of companies that are relocating, expanding, building or modernizing their equipment. You’ll know when target companies in your territory or area of coverage need your product or service. Now you can proactively call them and get started in the sales process. One of the best ways to evaluate its effectiveness is to open a complimentary account. You’ll be able to ‘see’ for yourself the quality of the project reports and maybe even call a few.

#9) Website Traffic

If your material handling company has a website -- which it should -- tracking its traffic can help give you a better understanding of the effectiveness of your marketing and sales efforts. When website traffic increases, it suggests more people are finding it through common channels like search engines, browser type-ins, referrals, etc. On the other hand, a reduction in website traffic suggests fewer people are finding it through these channels.