How Much Does it Cost to Get a Sale?
I don’t know what the cost to get a sale is for you or your company, but I certainly know how much it costs for me. If you do not know your own costs, though, I can say with almost 100% certainty, you are losing money.
PROOF: See VIDEO BELOW that shows incredible results!
There is no set number that says how much it should cost to get a sale. There are industry standards that say what others are spending in your same industry, and once you start tracking your own sales and marketing, you will be able to see if you are at least within industry standards. If you fall within the industry standards, at least you can be at peace knowing that you are operating within the norm.
Many of us are not interested in running business in the norms, and are doing all we can to grow while cutting cost percentages, thereby increasing profits. This is not at all unrealistic, and many businesses are doing exactly this.
Where do you begin? By tracking your marketing.
If you have not been tracking, you will not know in an instant. It may take a few weeks, a month or more, depending on your sales cycle in order to get a good idea of what it costs you and your sales people to make a sale. Once you have a benchmark, you can set expectations in your company, let your salespeople know how you track, and that you expect them to sell within a certain acquisition percentage. That way, your salespeople will know exactly what is expected of them, and there will never be any surprises.
Once you have given the expectations, it is also a favor to both the business owner as well as the sales reps for the salespeople to have direct access to their own numbers, so they never have to wonder where they are in comparison to the expectations. The same holds true for any advertising agencies that work with you. It will prompt everyone to action, based on results.
At the same time, it is up to you and your management to make sure the leads are assigned appropriately to the people who can sell, and optimize your marketing based on daily, weekly or monthly results among your sales team. When you track how well (or poorly) your people sell certain leads, you can adjust your training, adjust your lead assignment or do whatever needs to be done in order to get your high sellers in front of the customers where they sell best, and train in places of weakness.
If a sales rep understands that high-cost leads are earned, they are more apt to be proactive in their sales and overall lead generation. It never has to be a gut feeling or uncomfortable situation, because the numbers speak for themselves when you have a system that shows the cost of the leads distributed in comparison to the sales that have come in, and how those numbers compare to company expectations. If the numbers are off, either the salesperson needs to close some more of the leads s/he already has and bring down the acquisition cost, or bring in some sales through low-cost or no-cost advertising in order to bring down the overall acquisition cost for their sales.
If you are not tracking your sales and marketing, I can almost say with 100% certainty that you would be able to cut your cost of getting a sale substantially. Wouldn’t it be time to start working with your sales reps to be sure they are winning sellers, and therefore you would get the most out of your marketing dollars?
Winners Know Their Numbers.
Watch this video to see how one company used tracking to cut their cost of getting a sale by four times while increasing sales over a million dollars in only eight months.