We live in a world that’s saturated with data. Data can be ignored (like, did you really need to see how many new Facebook mentions you received in the last 90 seconds?), or data can be used for productive purposes, such as uncovering new sales opportunities.

Today, I have two sales-related data stories to share with you. One is a data failure, and the other is a data success—first, the failure.

Sales Data Fail

Several years ago, we made a change in our office and installed a new water dispenser with an inline filtration system, replacing the previous dispenser that required us to swap out jugs of fresh water five gallons at a time.

If you look at the picture above, you can see the water lines coming out of the wall. We moved into the modern era and no longer had to carry water! A few of my team joked that it looked like the water was now being delivered by Ethernet! Digital water, who would have guessed?!?

After the installation of the new system, I called the original water delivery service and canceled all future deliveries of those five-gallon jugs. The vendor confirmed that they’d cancel the service and come out and pick up the dispenser and extra jugs.

A few days later, the original water service vendor arrived to pick up the dispenser and jugs. Upon pickup, they noticed the new dispenser with the inline filtration system. The delivery guy, using a tone of voice that was a mix of hurt and anger, said to me, “You know, we could have provided this too, and we have a discount for existing customers.”

It took a few moments to hit me, but I ended up getting kind of mad at the original water company for their data failure. I faintly remembered them saying early on that if we ever increased our water consumption to a certain level, they’d have a more economical option for us. In other words, they could provide us with the exact same water filter we just installed and do so at a discount.

What was the data fail? The original water company didn’t see this coming. They have access to all the relevant data. Why didn’t they ever notice our water consumption had increased to “X” gallons a month and that “X” gallons would have been the perfect time to suggest an alternative that would have saved us money and kept us on-board with them as a customer?

Now let’s shift to the other side of the spectrum and look at a sales data success story.

Sales Data Success

Imagine someone buys printing from you. Good for you! Are they happy with the printing you provided? Are they happy with your service? Let’s send them an email to find out.

They’re not happy? Uh-oh. Better check in with them ASAP and resolve the issue. Phew, that was close, nice save!
They are happy? Good! This is the right time to suggest more products and services to them that they may not even know about!
They’re ecstatic? Excellent!!! This is definitely the right time to ask them to provide a review and testimonial so other prospects can share in the happiness and purchase printing from you, too!

A process like this uses data and converts that data to ongoing sales momentum. This is a data-driven sales process! Now multiply that data gathering and processing by hundreds of customers. That’s a lot of data to track, and that’s where our friends at LoyaltyLoop come in!

We’re all in the same club, so you’ve likely already heard of LoyaltyLoop. Here at Marketing Ideas For Printers we’ve helped a number of our website subscribers coordinate the data from their website with LoyaltyLoop, so we know that LoyaltyLoop is an NPSOA favorite!

The more we learned about LoyaltyLoop, the more we liked their service and their people, so we thought we’d try their service for ourselves, too, and I’m glad we did! Here’s why:

LoyaltyLoop increased the number of our reviews within the very first month.
LoyaltyLoop’s incredibly easy website widget allowed us to put our customer testimonials on the website instantly. (Can anyone say quick win?)
LoyaltyLoop made it simple to instantly widen the sales funnel with our current customers, letting them know about other products and services we provide and giving them the opportunity to learn more.

We really enjoy working with LoyaltyLoop, and we definitely enjoy the data-driven sales results they provide! And I’m willing to bet that you will, too. Are you ready to experience the same data-driven sales momentum that other printers just like you are experiencing? Then get started with LoyaltyLoop here: mi4p.com/loyalty-loop

Full disclosure: That’s an affiliate link and Marketing Ideas For Printers earns a modest affiliate commission (at no extra cost to you) if you use that link to get started with LoyaltyLoop.

Dave Hultin is the president and visionary behind Marketing Ideas For Printers. He’s on a mission to lead printers to success by providing powerfully innovative online ordering solutions and impossible-to-ignore content. If you’re looking to sell more printing and grow your business, follow Dave on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/davehultin/