Data-Driven Decision Making

Today, technology has made more data available than ever before.  If you choose, you can arrange your data, to understand quickly, every detail of both the people that became customers and those who didn’t.

What are your answers to the following:

• Can you group your customers by occupation, or by the companies for whom they work?
• Can you define your customers by home value or income?
• Can you identify the average sale based on home value or income?
• Can you examine declined finance orders by area or income?  Most of all, do you have this information, also based on those that did not buy?
• Do you survey, by an outside company each of your customers enabling you to understand their feelings about the many important factors of their buying experience with your company?
• Do you survey those customers that did not keep their appointment, those that cancelled or for any reason did not become a customer?

If your answer is no! you may be squandering opportunities created by inquiries.

The highest percentage of home improvement companies, even the aggressive marketers, actually work with little data compared to other industries.

The good news is your competitors are probably just as lax.  Depending on the lead source and the efficiency of the “lead setting” they may have as low as a 40 to 50% issue rate for canvass leads. In addition, 60 to 80 or as high as 90% for shows/events, media or SFI leads. How do they measure revenue loss or develop the means of creating a reissued lead? For the most part, many do not. You can separate and elevate your company far above your competitors with data-driven decision making for every aspect of your company.

These techniques are called “information management”. It’s time for the home improvement industry to leverage available data and manage the information for better decision making, growth and profitability.  Imagine, a college junior or senior working as an intern for $16 per hour, 20 hours per week, providing you with the information that will help you make your business jump ahead of the competition.

Now, that’s knowledge you could readily use and get a jump on your competition immediately!