You invest in advertising, hire managers, implement CRM systems, but don’t see profit growth? You might already have all the data you need. The problem is that you’re not using it. According to Dun & Bradstreet research, 20% of companies lost customers due to unreliable data, while another 15% couldn’t close new deals for the same reason. You’re spending money on advertising that doesn’t work, losing profitable customers through system failures, and giving up market share to competitors who simply count money more accurately than you do. In this article, we’ll explore how to start managing your business based on precise data rather than assumptions.
Three Critical Questions That Determine Your Profit
How much money are you losing monthly through ineffective advertising?
If you can’t name the exact amount each dollar invested in advertising brings back, you’re operating blind. Most owners say: “Google ads work well, but Facebook — not so much.” But that’s not an answer.
The right answer sounds like this: “Google Ads brings $4 in profit for every dollar invested, while Facebook brings only 80 cents. That’s why we’re reallocating the budget.”
Common mistakes owners make:
- Evaluating advertising by clicks or likes rather than the profit it generates;
- Not accounting for phone calls from customers after viewing ads;
- Mixing effective and ineffective campaigns in overall statistics;
- Stopping channels that seem unprofitable but actually generate profit.
For instance, car dealer «City Plaza,» which sells Toyota and Lexus, believed their advertising was ineffective — few website leads despite high costs. However, without call tracking, they simply weren’t seeing 70-85% of their conversions. Google Analytics only showed online test-drive requests, while most sales happened after phone calls that web analytics couldn’t track. Without this data, it appeared the company was overpaying for advertising with minimal returns.
Read also: «Is Your Ad Budget Getting you Nowhere? Pro Tips for Marketers and Heads of Sales Department».
How many customers went to competitors due to poor service?
Every missed call is a customer who will buy from a competitor. But the biggest problem is that you’re confident your managers don’t miss calls and generally work very well. “We have an experienced team,” “Few people complain,” “If there were problems, wouldn’t I know?” This is exactly what owners often say. Meanwhile, some businesses lose up to 30% of potential customers simply because no one answered the phone or the manager handled the conversation poorly.
Most common invisible losses:
- Missed calls when managers “stepped away for a minute”;
- Customers who hung up after 60 seconds of waiting;
- Rude or indifferent treatment of customers you never hear about;
- Forgotten promises to call back;
- Incomplete information during consultations.
The true number of missed calls during business hours is always a painful discovery for owners. Even more painful is listening to conversation recordings after which customers go to competitors.
The trouble is that even a very engaged owner who’s involved in work processes can’t physically monitor every call. They only know what managers tell them. And managers are unlikely to rush to report: “Today I missed 5 calls and lost an important deal due to irritation and rudeness.”
Beauty salon MONLIS received up to 90 calls per day during peak season, but only 3-4 out of every 10 potential customers booked appointments. The rest went to competitors due to missed calls and poor consultations. After implementing monitoring, 5-6 out of every 10 calls resulted in bookings — call-to-booking conversion grew from 30-40% to 55-60% with the same advertising spend.
Let’s calculate together. For a company with $25,000 monthly revenue, losing 30% of customers means minus $7,500 monthly. Without analytics, you might not suspect these losses for years.
Do you know the real reason for profit growth or decline?
Most owners explain profit changes through seasonality, economy, or competitor success. But often the real reasons are completely different.
Perhaps your profit grew not because of an attractive website banner, but due to improved phone communication by motivated managers. Or it dropped not because of war and global crisis, but because you accidentally stopped profitable advertising.
Logistics company TVL discovered through call analysis that they were receiving many inquiries from people seeking private package delivery, while the company only works with commercial cargo. This meant a significant portion of their advertising budget was going toward services they don’t even provide.
The data helped adjust advertising campaigns, reducing wasteful spending and focusing on truly profitable directions.
How to Independently Identify and Stop Losses
Simple Advertising Effectiveness Analysis
Analyze the ratio of online inquiries to phone calls
Review last month’s statistics: how many orders came through website forms and social media versus phone calls. If there are significantly more calls than online orders, it means part of your analytics is unavailable.
Often this problem exists: when a customer fills out a website form, Google Analytics knows exactly which ad they came from. But when the same customer simply calls the phone number, the connection to advertising is lost. For example, reports might show 20 inquiries from Google Ads and 5 from Facebook. You might hastily conclude that Google works four times better and shift your entire budget there. But actually, Google might have generated 20 applications and 10 calls, while Facebook generated 5 applications and 50 calls. Facebook is actually much more effective, but you don’t see it.
This especially applies to expensive products and B2B services. Customers rarely buy cars or order logistics services without first speaking with a manager. So if your average order value exceeds $250, most customers probably call, and you don’t know which advertising brought them.
TERRAHOME OUTDOOR — a premium outdoor furniture seller—intended to reduce contextual advertising costs due to few online applications despite high expenses.
After implementing call monitoring, they discovered that 60-70% of customers called for consultations before purchasing expensive furniture rather than filling out forms. Optimizing advertising for calls increased inquiries by 126%. The owner almost stopped the channel that brought the most customers.
Check the relationship between traffic and sales
Compare website traffic metrics and sales volumes over the past few months. Do traffic peaks coincide with sales peaks? If visitors are increasing but sales aren’t growing proportionally, you might be losing customers during peak moments due to insufficient managers or poor service quality.
Service Quality Analysis
Mystery shopper
The simplest approach is listening to recordings of your managers’ phone conversations with customers. But if your communication tool doesn’t make such recordings, you can resort to “tricks.” Ask a colleague your managers don’t know to call at different times throughout the week, pretending to be a potential buyer. These conversations will help you understand how your managers really work with customers.
Pay attention to several key points: how many times they’ll need to call back before someone answers, how quickly managers pick up the phone, how detailed and useful information managers provide, how they handle typical objections, whether they offer additional consultation, etc.
Often owners are surprised that customers sometimes wait 30-40 seconds for an answer, or can’t reach anyone during business hours at all. It might also turn out that managers provide incomplete information or behave rudely, which pushes away potential buyers.
Work schedule analysis
Find out which hours of the day have the most customer calls. This information can be obtained from your telephony statistics, for example. Compare this data with manager schedules: are enough people working during the hours when customers contact you most? Perhaps the main call flow comes in the evening or weekends, but you only work standard hours.
Existing customer surveys
Periodically ask your customers how they found you and what their first interaction experience was like. How often did they have to call before managing to speak with a manager? Were there any inconveniences during consultation, such as long transfers from secretary to the appropriate specialist? These responses will provide understanding of customer satisfaction with service.
Current Loss Analysis
Identifying top 3 problem areas
Based on collected data, identify the three biggest problems in your business. Usually these are:
- Ineffective advertising channels requiring large expenses with few sales;
- Missed calls, especially during peak hours when most customers call but fewest managers are available;
- Unproductive or unprofessional sales team work that loses customers.
Financial loss calculation
Convert each problem into specific monetary losses. Such calculations will help you understand where to focus efforts first.
For example, if an ineffective advertising channel “eats up” 30% of your advertising budget, and you spend $2,500 monthly on promotion — that’s $750 in losses.
Or if your employees miss 20 calls per week, that’s 80 per month. With 25% conversion—that’s 20 lost customers. With an average order value of $125 — that’s $2,500 in lost revenue monthly.
Finding hidden opportunities
Beyond obvious losses, look for hidden growth opportunities. Perhaps there are hours when calls are particularly numerous, but few managers work. Or there are days of the week with high customer activity, but your team works reduced hours then.
Also analyze your customer geography. Maybe there are regions or cities with high demand, but you hardly advertise there. Or conversely — you spend lots of money on regions where customers almost never come from.
Process Optimization and Improvement
Stopping unprofitable activities
Start by immediately stopping the most obvious losses. If there are advertising campaigns that bring no results — no online inquiries, no calls, no sales—stop them.
However, before stopping something permanently, make sure you see the complete channel effectiveness picture. Remember: a channel might seem ineffective in Google Analytics but actually bring many calls you’re not tracking. So first do an additional check. Connect call tracking to understand call origins or conduct a manual experiment—stop advertising for a week and see if phone calls decrease.
If you work with agencies that haven’t shown concrete results for months or can’t explain where your customers come from — end the cooperation. A reliable agency can always show the connection between expenses and results.
The safest approach is gradually redistributing budget. Reduce spending on questionable channels by 30-50% and move that money to channels that definitely show results. After a week, analyze changes in total inquiries and, most importantly, sales.
Improving customer service
Develop a basic script for managers: what exactly needs to be clarified with customers, what information must be provided, how to properly end conversations. The script doesn’t need to be rigid like in a call center, but basic points should be defined — this simplifies manager work and guarantees results.
Organize manager shifts during peak hours. Sometimes the most phone calls come at 6-7 PM, when potential buyers finish their workday and have plenty of time to study offers and choose products or services. Make sure enough managers work during this time. You might need to change work schedules or introduce shifts.
Implement a mandatory callback rule no later than 5 minutes after a missed call. This is simple but allows you to recover a significant portion of lost customers.
Testing new approaches
Try simple experiments to improve results. For example, add a quick callback form to your website with the option to schedule consultation at a convenient time.
Test new headlines and ad texts, update landing pages, introduce new scripts. Sometimes even small changes in presenting your offer can significantly improve results.
Setting Up Continuous Key Metrics Monitoring
Create a simple daily monitoring system for the most important metrics. This could even be a Google sheet where daily data about calls, applications, missed calls, and sales is entered. Although it would be much more convenient and effective to review ready telephony reports and set up automatic transfer of such call data to your CRM system through integration.
Regularly analyze advertising effectiveness: see which channels worked better, which worse, and make budget reallocation decisions. Even 15 minutes weekly devoted to such analytics can significantly improve your marketing investment effectiveness.
Develop a system for evaluating manager performance not only by number of calls handled, but also by conversation quality. Consider call-to-sale conversion percentage, number of missed calls, response speed to inquiries. Data for this is also available in standard telephony reports.
Introduce regular short meetings — 15 minutes every morning or at least weekly, where you and colleagues can discuss results, problems, and solutions. This will help the team better understand common goals and respond faster to changes.
The difference between owners who earn money and those who barely survive in the market is simple: the former know exact numbers for their business and manage them. They see where money comes from and where losses go.
Remember: every day without analytics and control is a day of lost opportunities. But every day with correct data is a day when you can make decisions that increase your profit.
