Effective use of Market Research to Increase Sales

Every Managing Director should set themselves the worthwhile objective of reducing the cost of selling. But how can this be achieved? Quite simply. The more you understand your potential customers, the more effective you can be in reaching them and convincing them to buy. The more you know about which customers are the easy targets, the less communications resources you waste trying to sell to the harder targets. It follows then that the more you understand how your customers buy, the more you can focus your sales and marketing efforts.

Every company spends money on attracting the attention of potential customers, taking sales enquiries from them and then converting those leads to business revenue. Whether this is a formal amount set out as sales and marketing budgets, or whether it is handled less formally, every decision-maker needs reliable information on which to base decisions.

Yet research shows that many of the UK's top marketing directors decide how to spend their marketing budgets on the basis of past experience and which marketing techniques are fashionable. In a world where people's behaviour changes on a day to day basis, these directors have completely missed the point. Any decisions to spend money to gain sales should be based on precise information about how your particular set of customers and prospects behave and how they make their buying decisions. Where do your potential customers look for information, whose advice do they seek and trust and how is your company going to come within their radar. These are key questions every sales and marketing professional should know the answers to.

• Who proposes the brand?
• Is it a specialist in a particular department in a large organisation or an outside consultant?
• Who approves the purchase - is approval required from a Director or the MD of the company?
• Which are the selection criteria that buyers use to compile their shortlist?
• Is the brand or the channel chosen first?
• How many suppliers are shortlisted?
• Which minimum criteria must you meet in order to be included?
• Which are the key reasons for making the final choice?

Successful and original messaging strategies are based on knowledge, not guesswork. With new technologies being regularly introduced to our lives, enabling us to change our behaviour very quickly, these sort of questions should be asked regularly to check your market has not moved on and left your company behind.

Dr. Cherry Taylor
Managing Director
Dynamic Marketing Ltd
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