Is your business successful?
You’re not the best person to answer that question. No matter how objective you try to be, you’ve invested so much time and money into your business that you’ll naturally be inclined to think you’re succeeding. You’re biased.
That’s why you must measure ROI correctly. The numbers don’t lie. They’re not biased. By looking at the cold hard facts, you’ll be able to see what you’re doing right and what could be improved. You’ll be able to make your business better.
#1 Are You Breaking Even?
Every business comes down to two things: income and expenses. That’s the bottom line.
So, are you making more money than you’re spending? The break-even point is incredibly important. If you’re in the black, then your business is sustainable. If you’re in the red, then something needs to change, fast.
Depending on their location and a few other factors, the expenses associated with taking on a new customer (fuel, work hours, etc.) might erase any profit you’d make from the sale.
Route optimization software such as Route4Me route planner will help you avoid this problem. You can use such software to create mock routes that show you exactly how much it would cost to visit a hypothetical set of addresses. Then, you’ll know how much you need to charge for a deal to make financial sense for you.
#2 How Many Leads Are You Converting?
It’s one thing to create a prospect by getting a person interested in your products or services. It’s much more difficult, though, to get that person through the sales funnel and convert them into a paying customer.
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Many businesses that have figured out how to generate prospects still have trouble making conversions. To determine whether or not you have this issue, you need to track the percentage of prospects that you convert.
Another benefit to route optimization software is that it helps you organize your sales strategy. You can choose a color for each of your prospects on the address map. For example, you can make your cold leads blue and your hot leads red. That’ll make it easy to see which prospects should be prioritized.
With route optimization software, you can split your service area up into different territories and assign a sales rep to each territory. Each set of stops that a rep needs to visit will be closer together. They’ll spend less time traveling, so you can give them more stops to visit every day without overburdening them. That opens up more sales opportunities.
#3 How Much Are You Spending On Fuel?
If you need to send employees out to meet with customers instead of having your customers come to you, then you surely spend a lot of money on fuel.
But you might be spending more than necessary. To figure that out, you first need to measure how much you’re paying for gas now.
Route optimization software with GPS tracking allows you to keep up with your fuel spending habits. It gives you a baseline to compare experiments to. You can try out different fuel efficiency techniques and discover what works for you.
And when route optimization software has a tracking feature, you can make sure your field employees are always driving in the most fuel efficient way. GPS tracking shows you where your field employees are and how fast they’re going in real-time. If one of them starts speeding, you’ll know about it immediately. You can get them on the phone and tell them to cut it out right away.
#4 Are Your Customers Happy?
Perhaps the most significant measure for success is the amount of new customers you’re adding to your business.
Route optimization software gives your field employees everything they need to arrive on time, every time. By respecting your customer’s time and showing up when you said you’d show up, you’ll make your customers more loyal. They might even recommend your business to their family, friends, and other people they know.
How have you been measuring your business’s success? Do you have any questions about this article? Let us know in the comments section below.
Finally, answering these three questions correctly will confirm that you understand how to measure success and ROI using metrics:
- Why is the break-even point important?
- How can routing optimization software help you convert leads into customers?
- How can delivery route optimization software reduce your fuel expenses?
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