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Off the systems sales campaign data
Sales campaigns are typically close-ended, and they are launched with short-notice to take advantage of an opportunity. This leads to some level of patch-work in the environment to provide support systems to the campaign. Apart from the short-notice, sometimes it may not be cost justified to make those changes.
This results in the non-routine sales campaign data to be recorded off the systems. You will still process the orders through your core systems, but the other data which is specific to the sales campaign may be stored in mails OR excel tracker. This puts a constraint on the level of analysis and reporting you can do, as it is a challenge to make loose data sources, to be part of your BI platform.
Possible solution to this issue: Create a more robust data capture system. Instead of excel, one can provide a web-based front-end with a DBMS back-end to have people enter the data into the our central database. It is possible to build this kind of system quickly and economically. After your sales campaign is over, please ensure that this kind of stop-gap system does not become your production system.
Sales Campaign data with the third party channels:
Your third party channels (3rd party distributors, 3rd party contact centres..) are equal stakeholders for your sales campaign. They may be less prepared than you are to get ready for the campaign. They may not be able to capture the sales campaign related data to the level you are looking for. For example, you may like to know on the point of sale location from where the Christmas offer pre-paid SIM card was taken, the channel may not be having this data. Similarly, you may need a more detailed information on the customer. However, your partner may not have the expertise to ask this information from the customer, OR they may not have the intention to share the information with you (as in many cases, channel partner owns the customer relationship)
Possible solutions to this issue:
- If you have an exclusive sales channel partner, invest into the information management infrastructure of the partner. This not only helps you to be more informed, but also increases the productivity of your partner.
- If you have a non-exclusive relationship, you can adopt a different technique with varying level of effectiveness. Use order fulfillment and service channels: After the sales channel partner has booked the business with you, your order fulfillment and post sale service processes come into play. These processes will have many touch points with the customer. You can use these touch-points to get the customer information, his purchase experience and his purchase behaviors.
Leads data in sales campaign
This is more of an opportunity than an issue. In a sales campaign, Sales people first priority has been to cater to the people willing to buy 'right now'. This results in lack of attention to generate a solid leads data for the future. For example, the outbound call centre calls a customer, and if the customer is not interested to buy right now, the call centre executive, may not extend the conversation to get more details around the customer and close the call with a positive note.
Possible solution to this issue: As a balanced approach, add the lead generation as one of the goals of a sales campaign.
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