4 Tips for Using Mapping Tools to Increase Sales

4 Tips for Using Mapping Tools to Increase Sales
by Christopher Elliott
reprinted with permission from Microsoft Small Business Center

Seeing is believing, at least when it comes to your customers.

Put another way, it’s one thing to know your clients — to have a detailed profile of each one in your records. It’s another to actually see them. Unless you’re taking reliable sales data and plotting it on mapping and analysis tools, experts say you could be missing out on valuable opportunities to increase sales and expand your business.

“Mapping helps you focus,” says James Chung, president of Reach Advisors, a Boston marketing strategy and research firm. “If you map, you can find your customers. And once you’ve found them, you can reach them.”

Representing data visually used to be an expensive proposition for a small business. The applications that did it were pricey; the consultants that helped you run the programs were unaffordable. But the Internet, and applications such as Microsoft MapPoint, have made it easier — and cheaper — to get the job done.

When I think of mapping, I imagine military leaders stooped over a giant map of a battlefield. But modern-day mapping is nothing like the War Room — or even pushpins on giant paper charts. Today’s mapping systems are inexpensive, and, yes, they’re even user-friendly.

Here are four tips for successfully integrated mapping into your business strategies.

1. Begin with reliable data.
“You can’t do any kind of forecasting unless you start with good sales data,” says Joel Schneider, an independent management consultant and founder of Liberty Technology Advisors in Northbrook, Ill. How do you know if the data you’re collecting is adequate? Your back-end accounting system should have several years of sales history. Depending on the kind of business you run, it should include a customer’s phone number, mailing address and e-mail address, at a minimum. Preferably, you also should have sales history so that you can project demand from the client. If you aren’t capturing that data, now is a good time to start, Schneider suggests.

MapPoint has numerous tutorials that allow you see what kind of data is useful for mapping purposes and then help you prepare your data before you import it into the program. There’s also a sample file that’s helpful for getting an idea for the different ways in which data can be categorized. In Windows Explorer, browse to C:Program FilesMicrosoft MapPointSamples, and double-click the SampData.xls file

2. Start picturing it differently.
Once your data is there, get creative about the ways in which you start displaying the information. Sure, you can plot sales by geographic area, including ZIP code, county, and state. But think outside the lines, and you’ll start to see other possibilities — like drawing a map by telephone area codes and prefixes, number of orders, or value of the client relative to your marketing costs. Try segmenting the data further by demographics, including gender, age and race. When you start getting the picture, you begin to see where you’ve been as a business. Maybe you see missed opportunities, but you’ll also see other opportunities you haven’t yet missed.

Many organizations offer resources on their membership that can be combined with your sales data and used for mapping purposes. Colin Milner, the chief executive for the International Council on Active Aging (www.icaa.cc) , says his organization offers data that helps companies market to his demographic group, which accounts for $50 billion in annual spending in the United States. “We want people to understand our members,” he says. “So by offering to help, it helps all of us.”

3. Go to the map to develop a short-term strategy.
Taking good data, slicing it and dicing it in several different ways and displaying it on a map, yields immediate results when it comes to a near-term business strategy. (In MapPoint, most of this can be easily achieved by using the Data Mapping Wizard function.) “If I know that 90% of my customers are from Missouri, then where do I advertise?” Jack Mackey, a vice president for Service Management Group, a customer research consultant in Kansas City, asks rhetorically. He says that with mapping tools it’s a no-brainer. “You see it on the map. You do it.” Smart businesses, of course, already know where their customers are, but a map can help you pick out the details — drilling down to ZIP code or census track so that you know exactly where the prospects can be found.

MapPoint also allows you to create customized territories with its Territory Manager. To show the Territory Manager pane, click Territories on the Data menu. Or click on the Territory Manager on the Standard toolbar. You’ll be prompted to either create a territory from your own data set or manually.

4. Remember, the map can help you forecast your future, too.
By representing your data visually, you don’t just spot obvious trends and react to them. Scott Schroeder, the president of Cohorts Inc., a Denver database marketing firm, says that you can get an edge on your competition by projecting sales and marketing strategies well into the future. “When you start projecting your data, you really begin to understand not just where your customers are coming from, but also where they’re going,” Schroeder says. “And that helps you understand where you need to be in the future, as a business.” For example, mapping your sales by primary trade areas and secondary trade areas, and then combining that data with market research surveys, can help a small business decide where to expand. “You know where the highest concentrations of your customers are going to be,” he says.

In MapPoint, you can do more than superimpose information on a map, by region. You can also create pushpins based on the data, which allows you to zero in on particular areas of interest. These are useful for identifying patterns that in turn could help you devise a long-term strategy.

Mapping can be a valuable tool for devising a business strategy, whether it’s a deciding whether to buy an insert in next week’s newspaper or where to open a new store next year. You don’t have to hire a pricey consultant; all it takes is the right applications, reliable data, and a little creativity.