Have you discovered the pots of gold?

When asking businesses what their number one issue is, I am often told “we need more customers” to which I respond, “right now, could you tell me how your current customers are performing?”

The common answer is yes, but when I drill down with a few more probing questions, the real answer is NO.

Whilst we all know that acquisition is far more costly than retention, it seems when it comes to retention, it is put into the too hard basket or seen as a low priority (right, because you’ve already won the business..wrong).

What many businesses don’t realise, however, is by having a clear picture of performance (and lack of performance) in revenues and expenses can uncover some pretty incredible pots of gold.

I am loathed to throw words like big data around and to be quite frank, most people don’t understand what this actually mean and therefore get scared every time the word data is mentioned.

Unpacking and more importantly understanding the data through performance deep dive tracking and more specifically your customers purchasing behaviour (or lack of) is what businesses need to make those tweaks immediately that can have a tremendous effect. 

Importantly it also informs the business strategy and what the customer really looks like for accurate segmentation and persona identification. Employing data centric segmentation enables accurate targeting when it comes time to expand the efforts to acquisition and therefore a much higher return on investment and effort.

But it’s not just about the data. Unless we are robots, there is something very important that combined with this performance knowledge, will set us apart. 

Consistent and incredible customer service and delivery.

Using this data is not just for the finance or the sales team but importantly for the team who are running the operations of your business. Whilst the operations team  informing the business with customer feedback, providing insight to them as to how the business is performing enables your on the ground team who are the most powerful team (as they are the face of your business) to drive this change and positive performance.

Remember...it’s not just about revenue but overall performance of the business.