Year End Planning Part Two:
Each planning module will guide you in identifying the essential data needed to complete the analysis. It's up to you to determine how to track this information throughout the year, ensuring it’s readily available for future year-end planning. Tools like QuickBooks and CRMs such as Capsule can be invaluable resources for managing and organizing your data effectively.
This was my way of crunching the numbers, you may need to adjust this data processing to fit your company's needs.
Part 2 of Year End Planning: Sales.
We want to analyze our leads, closing ratio and cost per lead. Start a new Google Sheet or Doc (or the like) and set it up for comparison year by year.
Sales Performance Review:
1. Total Leads: #
Question: How many total leads were generated this year?
Include all potential client contact, referrals, website submissions
2. Lead Qualification: % of total leads you went on an appointment
Question: How many leads turned into actual appointments?
Insight: This helps gauge the effectiveness of your lead qualification process.
3. Contracts Written: % of appointments you wrote a contract for
Question: How many contracts did you write?
Did you get to some projects and decide they were not a good fit?
4. Closed The Sale: % compared to appointments
Question: How many customers followed through with signing a contract?
Analyze any difference between writing a contract and signing a contract.
How many $ in lost revenue or time?
5. Sales-to-Leads Ratio: % compared to total leads
Potentially a reflection of your overall marketing or messaging, good or bad.
Lead Source Analysis:
6. Lead Source Breakdown
Action: List all your lead sources from your leads (e.g., website, referrals, social media, advertising campaigns).
7. Leads and Sales by Source
Action: Categorize the total number of leads and the number of sales generated by each source.
Example:
Website Leads: 100 leads, 25 sales.
Referrals: 50 leads, 40 sales.
8. Cost per Lead
Formula: Cost per Lead=Total Leads from SourceTotal Marketing Spend on Source
Helps determine the efficiency of each marketing channel.
9. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Formula:CAC=Total New Customers from SourceTotal Marketing and Sales Spend on Source
This metric identifies the cost of converting leads into paying customers.
Key Questions to Reflect On:
Which lead sources were the most cost-effective?
Which lead sources had the highest sales-to-leads ratio?
Are there any lead sources that require further investment or should be reduced/eliminated?
How can you improve lead qualification to avoid unnecessary spending on unqualified leads?
Bottomline, what's your closing ratio? % of appointments compared to sold projects.
What steps can you take to improve your closing ratio next year?
This structured analysis will provide a clear picture of your sales performance, enabling you to make data-driven decisions for the upcoming year.
As always, I am here to help with processing all this information and helping you to become more successful.