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- Know who has been buying this product, when was their last purchase, and in what quantities have they bought it?
- Let's zero-in on our top 3 customers by quantity, and take a look at what other products they are buying already.
- Now that we have some top prospects for our cross-sell, let's approach them with the offer to see how receptive they are, and refine our technique before we go wide with a marketing campaign for the other buyers.
A Product's Customers
We have all these beautiful spreadsheets from our manufacturers, listing all sorts of details from last month. Maybe someone bought our product of interest last month? Maybe they bought it in the spreadsheet for the month before that? There is a lot of work in answering a question that is potentially spread across many spreadsheets, even if you only want to go back one year for your answer. You could potentially go back to the manufacturer and ask them to do the legwork to find your answer, but what is the risk here? I wouldn't even want them getting into the thought-cycle of "you don't know who is buying this?".
However, we've been loading all that great detail into our sales system on a regular basis, and now it's time to shine. We click over to the Product Catalog, scroll / filter / or search for our item, and click on it. Metrics light up our screen: quantities Ordered and Shipped, total dollars spent, high/avg/low prices and the average discount given. Click over to the Customers tab, and there it is, the list of Customers who have purchased this item.
I can take a look at the full list, or sort by recent orders; in this case, I am interested in a top-down look at the Quantity column to see who are my top buyers.
A Customer's Products
Let's look into the purchasing habits of our top three customers. Right from this same screen, we can click the underlined Customer Name to pop up that Customer's entry in our Customers list. Boom, once again we are presented with some great metrics for our customer -- year-to-date numbers, last year numbers, growth percentage, and 12-month variations of those. Click over to the Products tab and visit a similar view to what we had in the Product Catalog, this time covering all the items being purchased. Do we have some synergy? This answer doesn't come from the metrics, but from some salesperson knowledge (with a side of our sales call notes in the Activities section).
The Approach
Now we make some decisions on next steps. Do we set up a Project for our marketing campaign, linking Opportunities that we pursue or responses we get from our broader emails or touches during visits? Projects helps us group our various entries from around the system to track what is going on, especially between multiple sales people executing on our marketing. Opportunities allows us to track Close Reasons and Win/Loss -- if we get a lot of losses like "price" or "missing feature", then we have some avenues to report back to the manufacturer and perhaps follow back up on those.
Trending over time, aggregating data at different levels, isolating opportunities, and surfacing details in a digestible format. These are some of the things that databases, and products like MRSware, do for us. Take a look at MRSware for your Sales and Commissions, and Customer Relationship Management needs.
For a visual look at what is described in this article, login to our Demo installation, complete with sample data that highlights these use cases. Would you like to see the same with your own data? Sign-up for the MRSware Free Trial (no credit card required, no time limit to your evaluation).
This offer is also open to new members; however, we thought we might offer an alternative to help agencies make a quicker decision to move on to new software, by lowering the barrier to entry significantly:
New MRSware Subscribers: Pay 1 Year Upfront, get 1 Year Data Imported for Free
This offer is for those of you coming from an existing system, and worried about not having access to data from your old system, or just concerned about the cost of getting that data into a new system. We want you to feel comfortable in MRSware, and part of that is seeing your customers, sales rep assignments, lines you represent, and some sales history leading up to today. We will import a spreadsheet that your existing system exports for you, to make sure you are up and running quickly -- and now, at no additional cost!
Activities or Results - Which Are You Tracking? ..., campaigns, and e-mails. Building and sharing a Relationship Database is part of what makes a CRM ...
MRSware is software for Manufacturer Reps, Independent Reps, and Brokers. We serve many industries, each performing the Rep function for their manufacturers in very similar ways. Our system works equally well on Desktop, Tablet, and Phone, making it ideal for office staff and field rep alike. Take a look at our website for a Free Trial, to schedule a Web Conference Demo, or just to find out more about our offering.
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