Sales & Marketing Effectiveness

Mapping the Treasure in Sales & Marketing Data

Want a better way to quickly understand and use your sales and marketing information?  Want to stop wasting valuable time wading through piles of reports and spreadsheets.  Wish you could make better decisions faster?  See the “big picture” clearly?

In today’s world economy, it’s not just enough to have the sales and marketing information to manage and grow your company.  You need to be able to slice it, dice it and clearly see the relationships and opportunities Location Intelligence analysis with mapping technology will allow you to do that, and more. 

For example, mapping will focus you and your sales reps on the right prospects.  Let me use our Charlie Story to explain.  Pop open the Charlie Map as you read the following.  Every company has a sales rep who is just a bulldog. You increase his/her monthly quota and he hits it every time. You love Charlie and he just gets the job done consistently.  Your Excel reports show his/her meeting and surpassing his numbers all the time. However, when you plot his customers/prospects on a map, you see something that the Excel reports don’t show. You see that Charlie is hitting his numbers by staying within 50 miles of his home and only rarely reaching out in his territory.  Who’s at fault?  Charlie?  He has done everything you’ve asked of him, plus puts in a full 40+hour a week work load.  Maybe it’s not Charlie.  Maybe you have been assigned  the wrong size territory.  Maybe you need another “Charlie” in the territory. 

How to Get Started
Mapping provides a visualization of your information that Excel or other reports cannot do alone. The reason we remember faces better than phone numbers is that we are visual creatures.  We get information relationships faster by seeing them on maps rather than on spreadsheets.   Maps along with location intelligence, helps us see the data relationships and provide us a level of insight that is quicker for decision-making.

The best way to start out is by applying the KISS principle.  Start out simple with an application like MapPoint where you can convert your Excel files to basic maps.  When you are ready to move up the analytics ladder for more complex analysis or need a system that will give others access to pre-set report summaries, then call on InfoGrow.  We build web-based systems that can get your entire team on the same page 24 x 7.

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Putting it all Together – Location Intelligence, Mapping and CRM Can Drive Sales for Manufacturers

Most manufacturers, distribute and sell products through big box retailers, high-end distributors, along with smaller mom and pop shops throughout the country.  They have 2 types of customers – their retailers/distributors and their end users.

Their challenges are to improve individual store and distributor performance, expand product lines within those channels without jeopardizing existing business relationships, and help service and be aware of the end user (people like you and me).

A coordinated approach, using location intelligence, mapping and a web-based CRM database will provide an in-depth analysis and enable both the manufacturer’s key sales personnel and their channel partners to better understand their shared problems and opportunities.

More . . .

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Location Intelligence & Mapping

With at least 80 percent of all data containing a location component, organizations have come to realize the power of integrating their business intelligence with location intelligence and mapping technology.  Location intelligence and mapping uses information about a location and can be delivered via the Web to help users easily share that information and make better decisions quicker.

The following represent some of the highest uses Location-Based Business Intelligence with mapping applications by Industry:

Retail:
  * Store Locators to direct prospects where to buy
  * Trade Area Analysis so sales & marketing are focused on the best customers/prospects
  * Target Marketing and Campaign Analysis
  * Store Performance Analysis
  * Site Selection
Banking:
  * Proximity Analysis for cash management
  * Site Selection & Network Optimization
  * Market Share & Potential Analysis
  * Sales Territory Optimization
  * Tying trade areas to CRM systems
Manufacturing – Wholesalers:
  * Dealer Locator
  * Lead Management
  * Sales Territory Optimization
  * Market Analysis
  * Target Marketing
Health Care:
  * Physican/Speciality/Hospital Locator
  * Proximity Analysis
  * Directory Print Management
  * Voice Activated Physician Locator
  * Marker Share Analysis
  * Site Selection
Insurance:
  * Catastrophic Management
  * Risk Analysis
  * Rate Verification
  * Agent Locator with Bio’s, Photos
  * Market Share Analysis
Real Estate – Commercial:
  * Map Index System
  * Lease/Asset Management
  * Acquisition Planning
  * Space Optimization
  * Space Inventory System

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Location Intelligence to Improve Business Processes

According to a survey conducted by MapInfo Corporation, and BusinessWeek Research Service, 64 percent of business executives believe that location intelligence can improve business processes, and 21 percent are planning to investigate it in the next year.

1,700 business executives participated in this international study to gauge the role that technology can play in delivering powerful, business-relevant location intelligence to leading organizations.  Location intelligence is a combination of software, data, services and expertise that enable an organization to detect patterns, risk and opportunities that CRM, ERP and Business Intelligence overlook.

BusinessWeek Research Services white paper – Location Intelligence - The New Geographic of Business.

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Business Intelligence – Reports at Work 24 x 7

Data is everywhere in your organization, and if you are like others we are seeing, its sheer volume may be overwhelming.  Business Intelligence (BI) is the umbrella term being used for transforming data into meaningful business insights for informed decisions.  A key element of BI is the relevance and immediacy of summary results, often reflecting the status of key indicators of the business and presented as PC dashboards using scorecards, meters and grafts. 

The objective of (BI) is to empower users at every level with the analysis knowledge they need to act on information or to take corrective action from key measurement indicators. The first trick is knowing what the key indicators for your business are.  The second is a process for gathering and summarizing the data quickly.

Over the next few weeks, I will share more about BI and how it is being used in sales & marketing.  I look forward to your thoughts and questions.

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