In This Episode:
In this episode, Ben explains how keeping on top of your marketing and sales numbers can help you make small tweaks that yield big results.
Show Notes:
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Full Transcript:
[00:00:11] Welcome to the Business Numbers podcast. I’m your host, Ben McAdam. I’ve helped over a thousand business owners with growth, profits, and clarity around the numbers, and I created this podcast to help you with that too.
[00:00:24] Let’s cover another of the six core areas. This one will usually be something you haven’t thought of, or doing it a little more seriously will yield great benefit from small changes.
[00:00:35] I’m talking about the fourth core area in your numbers, marketing, and sales numbers.
[00:00:42] I feel like I need a catchier or at least a shorter name for it. I’m open to suggestions let me know! Anyway, let me tell you about one of my favorite clients, Joe.
[00:00:52] Joe is spending over a hundred thousand dollars per year, I think, on his sales team, so that potential clients can have a call before they signed up on the website.
[00:01:00] But when I asked how the sales team were doing, Joe couldn’t tell me he wasn’t tracking any numbers.
[00:01:06] So we started tracking a few key metrics and spotted that potential customers were rarely turning up to the calls. It was fairly unusual compared to other businesses.
[00:01:18] After looking into his funnel, we made a minor adjustment. Sales calls could only be booked three days in advance, not up to three weeks in advance. And because of that, the show-up rate improved and so did his revenue.
[00:01:32] This was one of the changes that helped him go from 300 K a year to a million a year. And it was so simple to know what to fix with the numbers, and the fix itself was pretty simple.
[00:01:45] The numbers often help us see low-hanging fruit opportunities, the places we can make small tweaks for big results. And that’s what this core area of marketing and sales numbers is about. Again, need a catchier name…
[00:02:01] Marketing and sales is an area where we can succumb to shiny object syndrome or keep fixing the part of the funnel we know well . We can avoid these issues using objective evidence based on the numbers.
[00:02:15] Without a clear picture of our marketing and sales numbers, we’ll waste time and resources on a poor-performing funnel, or fixing the wrong thing in the funnel, or missing out on revenue, or stalled business growth, or even giving up on the business because it’s not growing.
[00:02:33] By getting clear on the marketing and sales numbers, we can reinvest into a great funnel, make more progress with less work, laser focus on the big needle-moving changes, and enjoy rapid growth in revenue and the business.
[00:02:47] Here’s how to do that.
[00:02:49] Actually, before we go into that, I’ve got a free resource for you. A quick exercise to find profits. It only takes 15 to 30 minutes and usually yields thousands or tens of thousands per year for my clients. And I give away the simple steps at profitscollective.com/QPH. That stands for Quick Profit Hunt.
[00:03:10] Now, back to how to get clear on your marketing and sales numbers. The first step is to map out your funnel. You need to be able to visualize how the funnel works, and then collect data at the key points and the percentage of people that progress between each key point.
[00:03:27] For example, the first step of your funnel might be someone doing a Google search, and then they go to your website or a blog post or a landing page. And then after that they might read a couple of blog posts or they might sign up for your newsletter, and then they’ll read some newsletter, emails. ..they’ll read some emails. And then they’ll book a sales call or they’ll buy on your website.
[00:03:57] All of that you need to map out, and each of those key points, there’s some data you can collect. How many people visit your website? What percentage of those people sign up for your emails? What percentage open your emails?
[00:04:08] There’s data at each of those points, and the percentages between each of them are important too.
[00:04:16] So that’s step one. Map out your funnel. Step two, find and fix the right problem.
[00:04:23] So now that you’ve got the data on your map of the funnel or set out in a spreadsheet or something, you can compare that to benchmarks. What normally happens at each of those stages? What percentages between each of those stages normally happen for other businesses?
[00:04:41] So using benchmarks you’ll see which parts of your funnel need to be fixed. They’re the parts that your business seems to be doing pretty poorly in that step of the funnel compared to other businesses. And the great news is that doesn’t mean you suck, doesn’t mean your business sucks, that means just like Joe, you can make a simple tweak and it’s going to rapidly improve the amount of revenue that you have by fixing that one leaky part of your pipeline, leaky part of your funnel.
[00:05:09] So that’s step two, find and fix the right problem using benchmarks.
[00:05:14] Finally, step three is to regularly review your marketing and sales numbers each week, each month, maybe each day. Make sure your fixes are actually working, but also don’t just do step two of finding and fixing the problems. Don’t, don’t just do that once.
[00:05:31] Have a system to regularly highlight the areas to improve and then improve them.
[00:05:36] A series of small tweaks over time can lead to a surprisingly massive amount of revenue growth, surprising amount of extra profit for your business.
[00:05:49] So
Step 1: Map out your funnel.
Step 2: Find and fix the right problem.
Step 3: Regularly review your marketing and sales numbers weekly, monthly, or daily.
[00:06:00] Now you know what to do. I have a question for you… I’m sorry for rhyming. I’m so sorry.
[00:06:07] Anyway, question for you. Do you look at your marketing and sales numbers every week or every day? Do you know what your numbers are? Do you know what the benchmarks are?
[00:06:21] If not, maybe there might be some low-hanging fruit improvements if you try it. Could save you some money, could help you generate a lot more revenue, just like for Joe.
[00:06:36] And with that, that’s everything I have for you today.
[00:06:40] I hope it helps. Reach out and let me know and I’ll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening.
[00:06:47] Thanks for listening.
[00:06:49] If this was helpful, please subscribe, follow, rate, like, share, comment, all the things.
[00:06:55] Show notes are at www.profitscollective.com/podcast or www.businessnumberspodcast.com.
[00:07:02] If you want some help with growth, profits, and clarity around your numbers, go to www.profitscollective.com for more resources or to book a quick chat about working together.