Listen to Your Data

Your CRM and management information system know more about your customers than you do. Face it, the data is already there. The question now is whether you’re doing anything with it. Using this data combined with the personal and business relationships with your customers is powerful and can be the leverage you need to accelerate your growth.

Here’s a conversation I have with print company owners and salespeople. I asked them how well they know their customers? They tell me they know them well and have been customers for many years. They know their names, their families, their preferences and their turnaround expectations: good relationships, they say all around.

Then I ask you a different question. I asked which of their customers have quietly shifted their buying patterns over the last 12 to 18 months. Which accounts that used to generate monthly revenue are now ordering quarterly. Which ones have started buying certain products somewhere else. This is where the conversation hits a snag.

Here’s the thing, that information almost certainly exists somewhere in their business. It’s in the order history of the MIS or the CRM, if they have one. But most companies aren’t looking at the information that way. They aren’t using that data to really understand their customers buying behavior and patterns.

The difference between knowing your customers and having insight into your customers, is that one is about familiarity, and the other one is about intelligence. Check to make sure there’s not a significant gap between the two in your business.

What is Customer Insight?

When I talk about customer insight, I’m not talking about knowing that someone prefers a matt coating over a gloss coating. That’s a preference which is useful, but it’s not insight. Real insight is knowing that a customer who has typically spun up a direct mail campaign every quarter hasn’t placed that order in five months. It’s knowing that an account that you’ve grown steadily over the last three years just started placing smaller, more fragmented orders, which often means they may be testing someone else. It’s knowing that a customer in a retail sector is expanding the two markets, which means their print needs are about to change: whether they’ve told you or not.

I’ve long used a phrase: how do our customers make money with the print that we provide? I’m more convinced than ever that the more we know about this, the more insight that we can have on our customers which can lead us to providing even better and more relevant services to them.

Answer These Three Questions

Using the data that you typically already have, be in a position where you can answer these three questions. First, who is buying less than they were 12 months ago? Not who has left altogether – those are obvious, but whose account is drifting from $500,000 a year to $250,000 a year. That’s a conversation you need to have before it becomes a $100,000 a year relationship or drops off the charts completely.

Second: who should you be selling more diverse services to? If you have a customer that is buying the same things over and over, that may be an indication that there’s other things they are not buying from you. Using your data, and a print services matrix, you can quickly identify what additional services they should be buying from you, but are not.

Third: which customers are doing something new in their business that will most likely change what they’re going to need? This one requires a little bit more work, because it means your team needs to be logging in those conversations, not just the orders into the CRM. That context, that insight, may let you know which customer may be opening three new locations or getting ready to launch a new product.

Glorified Contact List

Don’t allow your CRM to become an expensive Rolodex. It’s meant to collect real intelligence, which will help you identify patterns and flags. It’ll help connect what the data is saying what the sales team is doing.

But here’s the thing, you can have a world-class CRM and MIS system coupled with a top-notch data analyst staring at a dashboard, tracking every metric you can imagine. But if nobody on the team is looking at that information and picking up the phone and acting on it, it doesn’t really matter. Data without action just becomes an expense and often a crutch.

This isn’t meant to turn you into a data business. Merely, use the data you’ve already collected and paid for to make a positive difference to your business outcome.

Keep things simple. Often times this is about intentionally developing new habits. Start reviewing account patterns regularly, not just annually or when you do budgets. Or not just when a customer calls with a problem. Leading companies treat customer intelligence as an ongoing, meaningful conversation – and a way to differentiate themselves in the marketplace

Business transformation and creating new habits doesn’t just happen by accident. It’s driven by those who are willing to ask to hard questions, make the tough calls and stay the course. Good luck. Let me know how you’re doing. Oh, and have fun with this.

Mike Philie helps owners and CEOs in the Graphic Communications Industry validate what’s working, identify what needs to change, and create a practical path forward.

PhilieGroup | mphilie@philiegroup.com | LinkedIn

The preceding content was provided by a contributor unaffiliated with Printing Impressions. The views expressed within may not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of the staff of Printing Impressions. Artificial Intelligence may have been used in part to create or edit this content.