What do you measure in your sales and marketing? How do you determine success and failure within your company? In other words, what do you measure to get quantitative results?
I’m sure you’ve heard time and time again that “knowledge is power.” In the past acquiring knowledge and converting that knowledge into power was easier said than done. We are lucky enough to be witnessing the unfolding of the Information Age creating billions of dollars from information transactions each day. Recently, news broke of the upcoming IPO offering from the social media giant: facebook©. In addition to connecting people via the internet thru status updates, check-ins, and photo sharing facebook collects information about its users, and monetizes this knowledge not by selling this information but by selling the right to target advertising at its users. This model of collecting information, then monetizing the acquired knowledge is a tactic that is expected to bring facebook $75-$100 billion in the initial stock offering later this year. Using this example the evidence is undeniable: financially speaking knowledge is indeed power.
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That’s great news for facebook and there share holders, but, “What does facebook have to do with the vacation ownership industry?” Just as facebook collects and uses marketing information from its users, so should you. Collecting invaluable information from potential customers and existing customers or your company’s statistics such as your sales and marketing department has never been easier. What’s more is that you can easily monetize the information you have collected. Being able to collect and report your numbers on a daily or even hourly basis was a mere fantasy just a few years ago. Now, the most progressive organizations within the vacation ownership industry are doing this everyday by using Business Intelligence software, and so should you. By utilizing more of their acquired knowledge these companies are turning more of their knowledge into revenue by being more efficient, increasing margins, and growing stronger sales teams.
Using spreadsheets and paying a staff to pour over mountains of data is a thing of the past when it comes to collecting and managing sales data to pinpoint KPI. There are applications available that use technology instead of labor to identify your KPI in seconds. Take the TrackResults Software’s Business Intelligence for timeshare application for example. Since no one wants to allocate funds to unnecessary outlets Developers and PDs are asking themselves (or should be asking themselves), “How can we shave a few points here and a few points there to MAXIMIZE RETURNS?” One answer is actionable business intelligence. If you are using an app to generate your business intelligence reports at the speed of business then you are on the cutting edge, if you are not it’s time for an upgrade.
It is universally understood that increasing efficiency is on the agenda of every business. So with maximizing returns, actionable business intelligence, and turning knowledge into revenue in mind, the question you should be asking is, “Am I able to quickly track the metrics that define “success” for my business?” This begs a more important question, “Are we doing it?”
At the end of the day, despite what I or anyone else tells you, it is up to you to figure out what will improve your sales performance in both the short and long term. To help answer this final question I have included a list of items that a sales center should be tracking more importantly be able to access these reports real time reports at will. Most of us have this data or at least a rough idea. But ask yourself, “Am I able to access these numbers in minutes?” The fastest growing companies in the industry can.
Marketing
Marketing funnel: Inquires – Marketing Leads both in-house & vendor ,Incentive cost,% Tour show,% Tour Q vs. NQ ,Campaign success,Customer,demographics,% Revenue by marketing source/rep/vender,% Outbound mail drops conversion,Bookings/Confirmed tours,Q to NQ by marketing source,Tour Flow,% of generated leads converted to Qualified tours, VPG by in-house vendor or Referrals ,
Sales
Bookings,Cash Collected vs. Financed Deals,Avg Deal Size,Sales from Qualified leads,Sales from Not Qualified leads,% of volume by team/plaza/rep,% closed by day of the week/time of day,% closed by Rep by day/time of day,,% closed by Rep paired with TO,% pending by marketing source/rep,Conversion % by Country/State/City/Zip Code,Gross VPG vs. Net VPG,VPG sorted by marketing source/Rep/TO
Finance
Revenues Profits,Operating margin,Cash Flow,% of deals CXL,% CXL by Marketing source/sales rep/sales team/VLO,% of deals saved by VLO
TrackResults Software, in conjunction with Amdetur, the voice and political arm of the Mexican Timeshare industry , recently released the second (2nd) of a five (5) part article series on using statistics and analytics for a competitive advantage in the November 2012 issue ” NotiTur. ”
