The Simple System That Gives You Control over Your Marketing and Your Income.

By tracking responses we mean keeping records of people who call or come into your business and what promotion they received that caused it. You can call it a "response log" or a "leads log" or whatever you like, but it is imperative you keep something to record what came in and where it came from.

This sort of tracking is vital to your operation because it gives you much-needed data on how your postcards (and any other promotions) are doing, which postcard designs and lists are effective and what needs to be changed. This allows you to continue what works and fix what is broken.

And it’s much easier than you might think.

First Things First

Who is going to answer the phone? Depending on the size and type of operation you have, it might be you or a receptionist or a roomful of sales reps. Whoever it is, make sure you set up someone with the specific job. This might seem dumb to mention, but often the reason response tracking fails is because the person answering the phone didn’t know how to handle it, so it’s important to be clear about it.

As a note of advice, your tracking information becomes more reliable when you have only one or just a few people responsible for the job. Because there are fewer people to train (and fewer people who might forget), it is easier to be sure it is always done consistently and that means your information will be more accurate.

In any case, make sure someone is there to answer the phone or you’re just throwing your money away. Even if you have a voicemail, you’ll lose a lot of people that don’t want to leave a message.

Okay, so you’ve got someone there and you fire off a bunch of postcards. Now what?

The Simple Question

When anyone calls, make sure they are asked how they heard of you. Simple, right? That’s really all it takes. If they are a lead or a potential sale, get their name along with how they heard of you and any other details.

Sometimes you will find it necessary to ask a couple of times or change the question in order to really get an answer. A good receptionist will be skilled in asking this question in a number of different ways:

How did you hear of us? What caused you to give us a call today? What can we thank for your call/visit today? What brought you into the store? What led you to contact us? What promotion are you responding to? How did you get familiar with our company?

After getting the hang of it, it becomes as natural as asking for their name and is smoothly worked into the conversation without a thought.

Keep a Written Record

Once you gather this information, you’ve got to write it down. It’s easy to neglect this or forget, and much vital information can be quickly lost or forgotten. So it is absolutely necessary to keep a written record of some kind and be somewhat ruthless about making sure everything gets written down.

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