Keeping Your Deal Source Clean Is a Big Deal!

Ready to get nerdy? Trust me. It’s worth it.

Kick­ing off a new year is an IDE­AL time to get a bit more orga­nized! I took a week off of work to spend time with my fam­i­ly dur­ing the hol­i­days, and I found myself stay­ing home and doing some of my own orga­ni­za­tion­al projects. I even did some paint­ing. I had my kids go through their rooms too and clean out the things they aren’t using anymore.

Sim­i­lar­ly, I spent time the last few months orga­niz­ing my dig­i­tal fil­ing sys­tem here at ADC. As orga­nized as I am, I real­ized it was becom­ing more chal­leng­ing to find files with­in my Google Dri­ve. I decid­ed to build out my Google Dri­ve stor­age sys­tem so that all fold­ers and files were labeled the same for each client. I have since begun to write out a pro­ce­dure for my team on how to name and orga­nize each file when we save it! I’m real­ly excit­ed to see this one area in my busi­ness tight­ened up for 2021. 

Don’t wor­ry. We did fun stuff too.

Is Your CRM a Junk Draw­er or Orga­nized and Efficient?

With orga­ni­za­tion and tight­en­ing sys­tems in mind, let’s talk about your Cus­tomer Rela­tion­ship Man­age­ment (CRM) sys­tem. Is it time to clean up your deal sources?

I’ve been spend­ing a lot of time help­ing my own clients with this, look­ing under the hoods of their CRMs. It’s SO easy to have too many deal (lead) sources, includ­ing labels like: ​“I’ve heard about you before,” ​“your build­ing sign,” ​“the guy next door referred you,” ​“trucks and signs,” etc…

I’ve seen some inter­est­ing ones, that’s for sure. 

Don’t get me wrong: you want to know as best as pos­si­ble where your lead source orig­i­nat­ed. That gets more chal­leng­ing, how­ev­er, the more brand­ing your con­tract­ing com­pa­ny does around town. 

Lim­it Your­self To 7 – 10 Lead Source Categories

My sug­ges­tion is to lim­it your total lead sources to 7 – 10. If you want to drill down fur­ther, some CRMs have sec­ondary sources built into their sys­tem, or you can use a cus­tom field and label it ​“sec­ondary lead source.” 

Here are a few sug­ges­tions for top sources for a home improve­ment business:

• Social Media
• Internet/​Web
• Pre­vi­ous Customer
• Refer­ral
• Pro­fes­sion­al Referral
• Prospecting/​Biz Dev.
• Seen Around/​Trucks/​Signs
• Call/​Text Campaign
• Media/​TV/​Radio

A sec­ondary source is more for when you want to dig into specifics. If you are spend­ing mon­ey on a lead source that is very easy to track, such as Yelp, Houzz, or Ang­ie’s List, go ahead and make a main source. If it’s things like ​“coun­ty fair” or ​“email blast,” that could be con­sid­ered a sec­ondary source. You can then run reports around sec­ondary sources if you want to get nerdy with your data. 

I have a num­ber of clients work­ing on this sug­ges­tion, and I am begin­ning to see just how clean and easy it is to review mar­ket­ing reports! I love it. 

What oth­er orga­ni­za­tion­al plans do you have for your busi­ness in 2021?