By Dave Yoho, Dave Yoho Associates

Technology has made data more available than ever before for roofing companies. If you choose the correct data management solution, you can arrange your data to understand every critical detail of the people you sold as well as those that you did not. Answer the following questions:

• Can you group your customers/prospects by postal code to learn valuable details about geographical buying habits?
  
  
• Can you group your customers/prospects by occupation, or by the companies for whom they work?
  
  
• Do you survey each of your customers enabling you to understand their feelings about the important factors of their buying experience with your company?
  
  
• Do you survey those that did not keep their appointment, those that canceled or for any reason did not become a customer?
  
  
• Do you have systems in place to automate repetitive processes which will save your employees valuable time?
  
  
• Can you track critical Key Performance Indicators including website traffic, email open/click rates, qualified leads, presentation/demo rate, close rate, cancellation rate, net revenue, average cycle time, and status of projects in backlog?

These techniques are often referred to as “Information Management” and if you are not utilizing them, you are probably squandering valuable opportunities. Most roofing companies, even ones that are aggressive marketers, work with very little customer/prospect data compared to other industries. The good news is that most of your competitors are not using all these tools either.

Take a hard look at how you measure revenue loss or how you reissue unsold leads? You can separate your company from the competition with data-driven decision-making at every level of your business.

Does this sound expensive? It is not as costly as you might imagine. You can hire a talented, marketing-oriented, freelance college student or recent graduate to work as an intern and perform most of these tasks for roughly $16-20 per hour.

Take a step back from your business for a few days and evaluate the current systems you have in place. Work towards improvement in leveraging available data and managing customer/prospect information, and in turn, you will increase growth and profitability.

Dave Yoho Associates is one of North America’s largest, oldest, and most successful small business consulting companies. Dave Yoho has appeared in over 100 training videos. He is the author of the best-selling book: Have a Great Year Every Year (Oakhill Press). His company developed the sales methods which are used by the most successful people in the in home sales industry.