One of the key elements in any business’s success is its ability to generate sales. At CTi, we stress to our Dealers the importance of knowing their sales numbers so as to know what advertising is working best and whether they are doing the things necessary when meeting with the customer in order to make a sale.
A typical CTi Dealer experiences one sale for every six inquiries his Dealership generates. Normally two inquiries will come in that either are not viable due to not having a proper need for the product (ex. they have an asphalt driveway), or they don’t respond to the Dealer’s follow up. Four of the inquiries will answer follow up calls, texts or emails and the Dealer will be able to setup a time to see their project. Out of these four meetings, a Dealer will normally make one sale.
Knowing your sales model can help you in a number of areas within your sales and marketing efforts. An example might be if you’re generating a lot of leads from a particular advertising source but not getting customers to respond to your follow up. Your cost per lead (what you spent in your advertising divided by the number of leads it generated) may look great but you need to take your analysis a step further and see if your cost per sale (what you spent in your advertising divided by the number of sales you made) is still competitive with your other ads. If not, you’ll find that your return on investment from your advertising will suffer along with having to spend more time following up with inquiries that are not responding which will drive up your sales costs.
