You are a business. You just launched an expensive killer marketing campaign. Your campaign worked because customers are coming in droves. But for every 10 that walked in, less than 2 bought.
Your sales team is well trained and did all the right things. Your product is competitive, and price can’t possibly be lower than it is now. In fact, you have been shaving the price for the last 6 months but they are still not buying. After several rounds of management meeting, you decided that it must be the “economy” and hope for things to get better. You tell your team “We just have to work harder!”
Work smarter, not harder
If this sounds familiar, perhaps it is time to look on the “other side” of things. Lost Sales Analysis is a simple concept that focuses on discovering why prospective customers did not buy. The underlining idea is that if you knew WHY prospective customers who made contact with your business yet did not buy, you are more likely to know where and what the problems are and able to act on it. It is working ‘smarter’ instead of ‘harder’.
How do you know?
Ask them. By leveraging on Fusion’s Survey Accelerator, Lost Sales Analysis seeks to discover the reasons customers did not buy so that you can act on them. This information returns the opportunity to the sales pipeline; and creates a reason for intervention to recover a deal before it is irreversibly lost.
But knowing is just half the equation: To complete the process, the salesperson needs to act, and to act in a timely manner before the opportunity slips away again. That is why Lost Sales Analysis is configured to get feedback from a customer as soon as he or she leaves the premises. The idea is to deliver that information to the sales team while the customer is still looking to buy.
Focus on the customer
To do all this effectively, you need to focus on the customer; not the number. A business that is customer-centric will want to discover why they did not buy one way or another, with or without Lost Sales Analysis. With Lost Sales Analysis, it simply makes the task easier.
It’s all in the Mix
On a macro level, Lost Sales Analysis also helps identify gaps in your marketing mix. By classifying “reasons” into categories, you are able to see where most objections fall into, be it Price or Product or People. Investigation directed in those areas will reduce the scope of the problem and allow you to develop a more robust marketing strategy that yields measurable results in the intermediate term.
Quality is more important than quantity
While the number of responses is important for results to be sufficiently representative, it is the quality of feedback that gives insight into deciphering the real cause to a lost sale. Customers still buying tend to give more accurate feedback since they are still engaged in the sales process. Customers no longer buying tend to ‘justify’ their purchase decision by being positively or negatively biased depending on the outcome of the purchase. That’s why finding the optimum time to ask the customer is critical to the success of the programme.
But it’s still just a tool
Lost Sales Analysis is a tool, and like all tools, effective use depends on the one who wields it. The magic lies in the interpretation of the information gathered, and the quality of interpretation lies in the knowledge and experience of the executive who wields it.