salesWe are running a website (portal) where people can find local dealers for a certain product. They have the opportunity to call the dealer or send a request (contact form). Both of these are tracked, but can only be counted as leads. Now, I am looking for inspiration on how to track the sale, that means the person going to the store and buying there.
In the first place, I do not aim for a 100 per cent accuracy. It may also be possible to make a projection. It is extremely important to track those sales, as it is a key performance indicator for our business.
What came to my mind is:
Does anybody have experience in this realm?
If you’re selling face-to-face connection then there isn’t any 100% method of tracking, and any feasible mechanism to achieve that is going to change your core proposition.
However, the reasons you need to know include: demonstrating that you’re delivering value, improving conversions (through the whole online/offline process) over time etc. For these you need a fair sample of data, just enough to give you a decent view of performance at a point in time and over time.
On the customer side, I would go for an automated email follow-up, asking people to rate the experience. Make it quick and easy, as frictionless as possible. This will give you data, and it will build relationship with your visitors, adding value to your service.
That leaves you with the problems (i) that you don’t know how truthful people are being on objective questions; (ii) that you don’t know how to map data from respondents to the whole population. So you will want a regular routine of contacting some users who have and some users who haven’t responded on a 1-1 basis. In time, you can begin to push this work out to the dealers, adding value to your service (because they’re getting structured support in reaching out to actual and prospective customers) and keeping your costs in check.
On the dealer side, I would automate the tracking for them by making your best estimate for leads generated and converted, but allow them to enter their own figures. That way, the lazy ones will see a reassuring graph (and not a suspiciously straight one, as you’ll be combining observed, estimated and survey-reported data), while the pro-active ones will be able to compare their performance with others and use the data to improve their processes. If you’re worried that their graph shows they’re not getting value, that’s a warning you can act on.
The voucher should not be paid by you, but by the vendor that makes money from you bringing in the customer. So it is kind of a mass discount for you and you split the saving with the customer.
In this whole thing there is only the money that the customer brings in and the money the vendor is willing to accept, you will hardly be able to generate more value out of it.
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