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bp analytics trends

How to Spot Trends with Analytics

Using data to enhance your marketing

We talk a lot about analytics around here, but what does that really mean? In a nutshell, analytics is about finding patterns in data and then using that data to grow your business.

Understanding analytics for market trends
By using analytics, we spot market trends and help you make the most of them. We examine data from your industry to identify opportunities for you as an individual, pinpointing categories ripe for further growth and those where resources can be trimmed back.

For example, one trend we discovered showed equipment dealers’ new customers steadily purchase parts, sales, and services straight away. They didn’t buy heavy machines, however, until three years after first working with a dealer. Our data showed these customers wanted to know the dealer better before making such a big purchase.

Drawing on that data, we targeted our client’s customers for machine buys just as they began thinking about it themselves. This approach secured more sales and boosted our client’s bottom line.

Applying analytics to your business
Our analytics can also help boost individual product sales. If we see a certain item’s not selling well, we can promote a sale to get it moving again. Conversely, if a certain product’s selling well, we generate new promotions around that, enhancing customer retention.

We also conduct surveys to find out why sales are up or down, helping inform future marketing decisions. And on an even deeper level, we use analytics to tailor marketing messages to core customers while also augmenting messages to capture new markets.

With Winsby’s insights from analyzing your data, you will know market trends before they start, helping you pivot to profit from changes faster and with zero stress. Either way you cut it, Winsby analytics is a vital tool for understanding your market, identifying strengths, and optimizing growth when and where you need it most.

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bp keymetrics oftenignored

Key Metrics that Are Often Ignored

You’re spending money on marketing and sales efforts. Is it working? Are you acquiring new customers and retaining the current ones? Are your customers purchasing more often? Are they purchasing more? Who hasn’t purchased within the normal timeframe? Are you identifying them and contacting them before they’re lost? What are the important metrics that you need to monitor to trigger responses that translate into growth?

Revenue
Look at your 12-month rolling revenue in order to take the cyclicality out of your numbers. Is there a steady climb?

Number of Invoices
The easiest place to reach for growth is your current customers. They already know you and trust you. They just need to shift more of their purchases to you! Again, the 12-month rolling average for number of invoices should be growing. If you are retaining your customers, and they are gradually purchasing more and more from you, you should be seeing an increase in the number of invoices that you are processing.

Number of Customers
If you are gaining more customers than you are losing, your 12-month rolling number of customers will be increasing. This metric is also important to monitor to make sure your customer retention is high.

Last Purchase Dates
When did your customers purchase last? Do your sales reps have the ability to monitor and check these dates? Without that information, they can’t be as effective as they need to be to make sure you don’t lose customers, by contacting them before they purchase elsewhere.

Monitor Your Metrics Online
Winsby has developed an online portal where all your invoices are stored and updated monthly, so you can see trends and identify problems, then fix them. Our graphs show you 12 month rolling averages for revenue, invoices and customers. Your sales representatives can go online and see the last time each of their customers purchased, so they can call them and find out if there’s a problem with your company or with their own sales.

Are price increases affecting your customer retention? You can see the trends quickly. What is your customer retention? What should it be?

We’ll review your results with you every month and point out issues that other companies aren’t having, so you can identify them quickly and get things back on track.

Contact Winsby Today!

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customer satisfaction

Are Your Customer Satisfaction Surveys Actually Working? Look at Your Customer Retention

A lot of businesses conduct customer satisfaction surveys. When they are conducted correctly, surveys are one of the best ways to understand how customers feel about your company, what things you are doing right, and where improvements are required. But the question is, how can you be sure that your customer satisfaction surveys are actually working and worth the cost and effort to conduct them regularly?

The answer is, look at your key metrics. In particular, look at your customer retention.

What are customer satisfaction surveys?

Customer satisfaction surveys are a tool used to measure how happy customers are with different aspects of your company, including product quality, customer service, pricing, and almost anything else related to your business. They give you insights into how to improve your products and services, and your overall sales process. The only way to make things better is to first understand where your weak spots are. That’s where the customer satisfaction surveys are critical.

How is your customer retention?

One of the most important metrics for your company is customer retention. You might even be able to say it’s the most important metric. In simple terms, customer retention looks at the percentage of customers that bought from you within the last 12 months who also purchased within the prior 12 months to that. Maintaining retention over the long term is critical for your purchase frequency, purchase volume, and overall profitability.

For the majority of companies we work with, the revenue that each customer generates increases dramatically when they go from year two to year three working with them. Here are the typical purchase frequency gains that we see for equipment dealers, as an example: 2.9X more equipment, 9.1X more rentals, 4.1X more service, and 5.6X more parts in the third year, compared to the second year. Overall, their customers spend 30% more in the second year of working with them and another 50% more in year three.

The relationship between customer satisfaction surveys and retention

We’ve established that customer retention is extremely important to increasing your revenue and the long term growth of your company. But how is that metric related to surveys?

If customer satisfaction surveys are working, you should be seeing significant improvements in your customer retention. For example, at Winsby, our customer satisfaction surveys consistently produce gains of 20% – 30% in customer retention. What an increase in customer retention means is that revenue is much higher than it would have been if we had not been conducting customer satisfaction surveys for them.

If you aren’t seeing these gains in customer retention and the corresponding increase in purchase frequency and revenue, then something is probably wrong with the way you’re conducting your customer satisfaction surveys.

Do you want to start conducting customer satisfaction surveys that actually produce useful results and help you improve your company? Contact Winsby today, and we’ll take care of it for you!

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AtRisk

How You Can Identify at Risk Customers for Your Business

When your company has at risk customers, it means that you are in danger of losing them to the competition. They may start going to another company for some of their needs, start buying less and less with you, and become less receptive to your marketing efforts. One of the keys to the long term success of your business is holding on to as many of your current customers as possible, because it is much more expensive to find new ones.

You need to be able identify which of your customers are at risk and then proactively try to prevent them from leaving. The question is, how can you know who those at risk customers are?

Look at the key metrics

Key metrics refer to numbers and analytics that give you insights into your business and how well it is performing in different areas. The most important key metric for customers at risk is purchase frequency.

Purchase frequency tracks the number of times a customer buys products or services from a company within a given period. Looking at this key metric matters, because if you notice it’s dropping off, it may indicate that the customer is purchasing from one of your competitors instead of you. In other words, if the intervals between purchases is becoming longer than usual, assuming the customer still needs the product or service you offer, it must mean that they are getting it somewhere else.

If purchase frequency is decreasing for a customer, your sales team should reach out to them as quickly as possible. They have to ask them about their needs, offer to fulfill those needs, and see if there have been any issues with their interactions at your company. The problem is, more often than not, the majority of people will not tell you proactively if your business isn’t serving them adequately, or if you’re falling short in some way.

Understanding customer purchase frequency and other key metrics can give you insights into whether something is wrong or if you have at risk customers.

How to keep at risk customers from leaving you

Once you determine which customers have a decreasing purchase frequency, the next step is to do something about it and prevent those at risk customers from leaving you for the competition. The best way to accomplish that is through customer satisfaction surveys conducted by a third party. These surveys will tell you exactly what customers think about your products, your processes, and your business overall. They’ll help you identify the issues that at risk customers are having, so you can solve them before they leave you.

Your customers’ responses will reveal areas that need improvement. Whenever a survey score is low or you receive a negative response, you can be made aware of it, find out the details, and fix it. Unhappy customers very much appreciate being called, and by conducting the surveys and taking steps to fix the problems they’re having, you show them that you care.

Implement Winsby’s customer satisfaction surveys

The clients that implement Winsby surveys see an increase in customer retention of between 20% and 30% and higher purchase frequency. There are several reasons that these surveys are so effective:

  • Surveys are conducted over the phone – Winsby uses phone surveys because they can reach a customer on every third call. When they talk to someone and ask if they will take the survey, 97% agree to take it. Plus, if anything is unclear in the questions or responses, the caller can ask for details.
  • Using a third party works better – As a third party, your customers will be much more candid with Winsby than they will be with one of your own employees. The reason for this difference is that many people are too polite to say negative things about an organization to a member of that organization.
  • Highly effective scripts – Winsby has a lot of experience writing survey scripts that actually work and prompt useful responses. They will work with you to determine what’s most important to include, write the script, and have you review and approve it.

If you want to understand purchase frequency, recognize at risk customers, and boost your retention, contact our team today!

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bp frequency

What Purchase Frequency Really Means for Your Company

Purchase frequency is a key metric that is critical for understanding the behavior of your customers. It’s arguably one of the most important analytics that you can track and understand for your company, because it tracks how often a customer buys a product or service from you. That information can tell you whether a customer is purchasing from a competitor instead of you, show you areas of your business that need improvement, and more.

Purchase frequency and your competitors

Purchase frequency is one of the most important indicators of whether your have at risk customers or not. At risk customers are ones that you are in danger of losing. If a customer’s purchase frequency is decreasing, that could indicate that they are buying from a competitor instead of from you. Most businesses will need a continuous supply of key parts and services. If they are no longer receiving those things from you, then they are going somewhere else. When this continues to happen for a long period of time, at risk customers will become lost customers.

Understand where improvements need to be made

Many businesses are actually a collection of multiple types of businesses with different purchase frequencies and needs. For example, heavy equipment dealers usually include four businesses: service, parts, rental, and equipment sales, new and used. If the purchase frequency for one of those departments starts to fall off, but the other areas remain strong, then it’s a sign that you need to devote resources towards improving the aspect or department that isn’t doing as well.

Know your customers’ purchase behavior

After you begin consistently tracking purchase frequency, you will start to understand some useful information about your customers. Once you determine the baseline of a normal purchase frequency, along with information about when and how much they typically buy, you can focus your marketing efforts around existing purchasing habits and trends. Plus, you’ll recognize when something is wrong more quickly, so you can respond more effectively and keep at risk customers from leaving you.

How to improve purchase frequency: Implement email marketing by Winsby

When Winsby develops and sends emails on behalf of a client, their customers that are on their email distribution list buy two to three times more often than those customers who are not on their list. The reason for this increase is that effective emails remind customers about your products and services, show that you know what you are talking about, and give them an easy opportunity to buy from you.

Purchase frequency is a key metric that every business should be paying attention to and finding ways to improve. Zintoro will track it for you, and Winsby will help you increase it.

If you want to understand purchase frequency, recognize at risk customers, and track other key metrics, contact the Winsby team today.

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Sales

How to Measure the Sales Performance of Your Reps

The backbone of distributor and manufacturer businesses is their sales reps. Your marketing introduces your brand, product lines, and services to leads and prospects, and your sales people are responsible for bringing them over the finish line and converting them into new customers. They are also a crucial piece of retaining your current customers over the long term, encouraging them to purchase again and again, which is very important for the long term health of your company.

Because your reps form such a cornerstone of your entire operation, it’s critical to consistently measure and track sales performance.

Conduct a sales performance analysis

Sales rep tracking and performance metrics allow you to see how well individual reps are doing in comparison to other reps or benchmarks and goals that you have set with them. The sales metrics that are most important for you to track include:

  • Conversion rates
  • Appointment setting rates
  • Customer retention rates
  • Customer purchase frequency
  • Overall revenue generated for the company

These sales metrics give you a clear idea of how much business your rep is bringing in and how much value they are adding to the operation. It’s important to set realistic and obtainable goals for each of these analytics, and then track their progress towards achieving them with a regular sales performance analysis.

Why it matters for your business

Sales rep tracking matters, because it gives managers a quick look at who is underperforming and what can be done to improve. Understanding the most important sales metrics allows managers to set goals for the team and for each individual sales person and then easily recognize whether they are achieving them or not. Without tracking performance, you have no idea if your sales team is doing what they need to do, or if there is a problem that needs to be corrected.

By understanding the sales metrics and what they mean as early as possible, you will have plenty of time to make corrections, put team members on action plans if improvement is needed, and generally solve any issues before you lose customers.

Rely on our sales performance analysis

Once Winsby completes your sales performance analysis, you’ll gain an exact understanding of how well your reps are hitting their targets. You can also see where they are falling short and have a better idea where the issue is. For example, if their initial conversion rate is high but retention rate is low, then it might mean that they are not following up effectively or consistently. Individual reps can also see how they are performing in comparison to their colleagues, which can help motivate them to improve.

Once you understand the sales metrics and how well your reps are currently performing, we’ll identify simple actions that have maximum impact on customer engagement, customer retention, and growth. The recommended actions specify exactly what needs to be done to improve sales performance.

If you want to start tracking and improving sales performance, or you have a question about which sales metrics are the most important, contact our team today.

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retention

How to Improve Business Retention

Business retention, also called customer retention, is a metric that tells you the percentage of customers who purchased within the last 12 months who also purchased within the previous 12 months before that. Failure to maintain retention means that people are not committed to working with you and that you are losing customers over the long term.

Poor business retention forces you to devote more and more resources to finding new customers to replace the ones you are losing. Because it’s much more expensive to sell to a new customer than an existing one, this situation becomes a drain on your company’s resources.

Why business retention matters

Customer retention matters for every company’s long term success. Not only is constantly needing to find new customer costly and time consuming, but the longer someone works with you, the more value they produce for you. For example, the statistics for equipment dealers are that customers purchase 2.9X more equipment, 9.1X more rentals, 4.1X more service, and 5.6X more parts in the third year as a customer, compared to the second year.

In other words, someone is a much more lucrative customer for you the more years they buy from you. In fact, it typically takes three to five years to replace the income from an existing customer with the income from a new customer.

The moral of this story is to hold on to your current customers.

How can you accomplish that goal? By improving your business retention.

First, understand why people leave you

There are several main reasons behind poor business retention. Customers decide to stop working with you because:

  • Their expectations have been mismanaged
  • Your team hasn’t been keeping them informed of the status of their orders
  • There is a change in point of contact for either you or the customer
  • Your team isn’t properly trained or adequately knowledgeable about your products
  • Your employees lack the information system support and tools required to be responsive and effective

The first step of improving business retention is pinpointing the reason people are leaving you. Once you understand that reason, you can take actions to improve it.

How we help you retain your customers

Winsby gives you the data, insights, and tools to recognize at risk customers and keep them from leaving you, thereby improving your customer retention rate.

Provide excellent customer service – The best way to hold on to customers is by delivering great, responsive service to your customers. In order to do that, you have to understand their expectations and respond effectively to their needs. At Winsby, we use customer satisfaction surveys to find out what our clients’ customers expect from them and to determine whether there are any problems with our clients’ processes. Armed with these insights, your team can make improvements, fix any issues, and prevent at risk customers from leaving.

Personalize customer interactions – Using our AI system, you can identify the next purchase of a customer, what industry and market they are in, and whether they are at risk. Using that information, you can tailor messaging and offers to meet their specific requirements or current needs. Plus, at Winsby, our team keeps your master lists up to date with the correct contacts, phone numbers, and email addresses.

Always maintain consistent communication – Winsby helps you effectively stay in contact with customers in multiple ways. Using the purchase data we provide you; you can reach out to customers who have not purchased again within their usual time period. We will also distribute highly effective emails on your behalf. Customers who receive our emails usually purchase about two to three times more often than those who don’t. Lastly, our analytics program integrates with most CRM systems to combine analytics data with your sales and marketing data, helping streamline your customer communication.

Know the signs of at risk customers – By tracking the frequency, consistency, and types of purchases, you can recognize who your at risk customers are. If your sales team knows who is in danger of leaving you, they can contact them, ask about their needs, and potentially deliver a special offer or other incentive to get them to stay.

The key to increasing business retention and keeping at risk customers from leaving is to take the right actions as early as possible.

Act sooner, rather than later

Building lasting relationships with customers is crucial for the long term viability of your company, because it makes them more valuable to you and it takes fewer resources to sell to them. Winsby provides the insights, data, and tools needed to retain customers, increase business retention, and improve your sales.

If you’re ready to hold on to more at risk customers and boost retention and sales.

Contact Winsby Today!

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geographic

What Is the Geographic Market for Your Business?

For most companies, there are a lot of factors that go into whether or not a customer chooses to do business with you. Things like quality and availability of products and services are key factors that are at least partially in your control. You can improve on them and master them. But there are some factors that are out of your control. One of those is the distance limitations for your geographic market.

Understanding your geographic market

Distance for geographic market is a metric measures the number of miles that customers will travel to do business with you. Beyond that distance, a customer is very unlikely to work with you. Geographic market varies within industries and regions, but most businesses, especially physical, brick and mortar ones, have one. In order to understand the geographic market for your equipment dealership, you have to look at the locations of your customers to see whether distance is a factor and how important of a factor it is in developing your customer base.

Why does geographic market matter for equipment dealers?

If you determine that distance is a factor for your customers, it will be very difficult to retain ones that are beyond the range that is comfortable for them to travel. For example, most heavy equipment dealers have a service area that is usually a maximum of 60 miles. The primary reason is that beyond that distance the dealer won’t be able to reach a customer who needs emergency service quickly enough.

When you have difficulty gaining and keeping customers beyond a certain distance or outside of a certain geographic market, it’s not worth trying to sell your products and services to them. To avoid wasting money targeting customers that are extremely unlikely to work with you anyway, it’s critical to know how far the reach is for your company.

How to take advantage of distance to geographic market

Distance from a customer is something you don’t have much control over. But you can use the knowledge of your range to your benefit. It’s important for equipment dealers and other types of businesses to conduct a market analysis of potential customers to determine how large their potential market is and exactly what the distance is for their maximum reach.

This analysis will help guide your marketing strategy and keep you from wasting resources on leads and prospects that are unlikely to work with you, regardless of how great your services are or how effective your marketing is. By understanding your company’s distance for geographic market, you will be more focused and effective in building your customer base. In the long run, this focus will help you save money, tailor your marketing and sales message more specifically, and become extremely proficient at serving the customers in your area. You won’t be wasting time and resources chasing down far away business that will never convert.

What is your geographic market? Do you how to identify prospects within that market, so you can convert them to customers?

Get help identifying who your best target customers are.

Contact the Winsby team today!

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customerretention

Why Customer Retention Is Key for Purchase Frequency

Purchase frequency is a crucial metric for any business. It tracks the number of times a customer buys products or services from a company within a given period. There is no such thing as a “one-size-fits-all” number for purchase frequency, because how often the typical customer purchases has a lot to do with the types of products and services you are selling, but higher is always better. Where customer retention fits in is that the longer a company retains a customer, the more often they purchase and the more revenue they generate for you.

How companies should think about customer retention

Customer retention measures the percentage of customers that purchased within the last 12 months that also purchased within the prior 12 months. Maintaining retention over the long term is critical for your purchase frequency, purchase volume, and overall profitability.

For most companies, the revenue that each customer generates skyrockets when they go from year two to year three of working with you. Here are the typical purchase frequency gains that we see for equipment dealers, as an example: 2.9X more equipment, 9.1X more rentals, 4.1X more service, and 5.6X more parts in the third year. Overall, their customers spend 30% more in the second year of working with them and another 50% more in year three.

Improving customer retention and purchase frequency

The best method for improving your customer retention and, in doing so, the purchase frequency and purchase volume of your customers, is through customer satisfaction surveys conducted by a third party. When they are done right, surveys give you insights into why customers are leaving you for the competition, where the gaps in your processes are, and what customers value most about a company.

Using a third party will elicit candid comments that customers may not want to share with an employee of your company, and the surveys will provide very specific feedback, so you can solve any issues quickly. At Winsby, we see an increase in retention rates of 30% or more when customers are routinely surveyed about their experience with a company.

That means that 30% more of your customers are staying with you each year, moving closer towards those higher purchase frequency and purchase volume numbers.

Our customer satisfaction surveys are highly effective

The best type of customer satisfaction surveys are phone surveys, because they typically provide a better sample. At Winsby, our team will usually reach a customer over the phone on every third call. Then, once we reach them, 97% agree to take the phone survey. This rate is much better than responses for email surveys, for which a good response is 2% of recipients.

When conducting customer surveys, we get to the heart of what your customers care about, how well you are fulfilling their needs, and any areas they feel you should improve. Surveys give you the ammunition you need to act, so you can boost customer retention, purchase frequency, and purchase volume.

If you want to increase your customers’ purchase frequency and purchase volume, then

contact the Winsby team today!

Categories

CUSTOMER RETENTION
CUSTOMER SATISFACTION SURVEYS
EMAIL MARKETING
EQUIPMENT DEALER MARKETING
KEY METRICS
Key Metrics Reports
LEAD GENERATION
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