Month: January 2014

Marketing Reports

On By Tim KlabundeIn Marketing1 Comment

The more I have become addicted to marketing metrics the more I find that it is important to step back and take a big picture look at the reports I am running. When I first began developing marketing metrics many years ago it seemed that I was generating great data, but it was not always actionable data. Over time I have learned how to focus on developing data and metrics that drive better decisions and revenue. This past week I have been thinking about the reports that I will be running over the next 12 months with a focus on producing data that can be acted on to help drive profits. Below is a listing of some of those reports and I hope many of you will find the list beneficial. I would love to hear if you have additional reports that you are running to help drive top line growth.

Monthly Reports

  • Revenue Forecasting
    • Lead Reporting
    • Pipeline Reports (Fee proposals and qualification based proposals)
    • New Business Reports (New work signed by month)
    • Backlog Report (Volume of contracts signed but not yet billed)

Quarterly Reports

  • Marketing/BD Costs by group, division, and companywide
    • Marketing Labor Costs (Marketing personnel Only)
    • Marketing Labor Costs (Non-marketing personnel)
    • Business Development Labor Costs
    • Marketing/BD Non-Labor Costs
  • Hit Rates by group, division, companywide, and most importantly by opportunity owner
    • Proposal to Awarded
    • Shortlisted to Awarded

Bi-Annual Reports (1/1 and 7/1)

  • Revenue Comparison Report (Compare revenues for Top 100 clients to prior 3 years revenues from those same clients)
    • Identify growth and losses for top clients
      • Reversible or Inevitable?
  • Identify Client Managers and set meetings regarding relationships that are losing ground

Annual Reports

  • Project Size Report
    • Project profitability by project size and as portion of total profitability
    • Project size as portion of total revenue
    • Repeat Clientele Percentage (percentage of clients that are New vs. Repeat)

What will a CRM do for me?

On By Tim KlabundeIn CRM, Marketing3 Comments

One of the primary goals of a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system should be Increasing Revenue. This is accomplished by leveraging many aspects of the system, the most important of which are: Communication, Collaboration, Follow-up, Reporting, and Forecasting. I was recently asked what we should expect from our corporate CRM (Deltek Vision) and I thought that you might find the list helpful as well.

A Good CRM should:

  • Be the corporate Client Database
  • Measure Business Development outreach efforts
  • Remind you to follow-up in a couple of days, weeks, or years
  • Become a central repository for notes and information on a given client or lead
  • Manage qualified leads and keeping them from falling off the radar
  • Manage and track outstanding fee proposals, including forecasting revenue
  • Manage and track outstanding Statements of Qualifications, including forecasting revenue
  • Track customer interactions
  • Identify Business Development Tasks that need to happen
  • Identify if those Business Development tasks are actually happening
  • Notify Client Managers about interactions everyone else the company is having with their client
  • Provide feedback on projected revenues and actual revenues
  • Report projected revenues by group/division/ company
  • Increase collaboration between groups and divisions through information sharing
  • Flag Client Managers and management when revenue is declining for a given client
  • Provide a historic record of project files prior to the award of a project
  • Identify money pits (people we’ve been pursuing for years to no avail)
  • Be a central repository of information on winning firms (ex: Architects that are winning Higher Ed, Local Gov, K12, work that we can team with to pursue future work)
  • Report on Business Development activities: “That which is measured is improved”
  • Manage conferences – costs, exhibiting, attending – and relate it back to specific employees
  • Track and measure Master Contracts (term contacts) to ensure they are being leveraged fully
  • Answer the question: What happens to someone’s contacts when they leave?
  • Provide historic Information on pursuits, lunches, relationships, and more

A Great CRM should:

  • Integrate with existing project and client data, allowing for cross reporting related to current revenues and past revenues and how these relate to future revenues
  • Identify “Stuck Opportunities”
  • Report on the effectiveness of the Business Development staff
  • Identify who and what efforts result in new work
  • Integrate with a Client Retention Program (ex: survey feedback loop to measure success)
  • Become a measurable part of the employee review process