The Analysis of Route to Increase Sales Profits and the Number of New Customers

Team Leadership and Business Goals

As the Assistant Sales Manager at Argus, with past performance, I was allocated to lead a team. Our team mainly provides MERCHANT PROCESSING Services to business owners who accept transaction payments through a secure channel. The goal of our team is to attract more business owners to become our customers and increase sales profits. In fact, our sales staff went to different cities to promote our company’s services. My task was to establish a route for salespeople through data analysis to maximize profitability and increase the number of new customers. The first challenge for me to solve was finding a route with the most significant potential profit.

Factors Affecting Profitability

At the beginning of the project, I summed up several factors that affect our profitability. These factors included the current MERCHANT Service rates in the region, the average sales of the local businesses, and the cost of salespeople’s business trip.

Data Analysis for Maximizing Profitability

Through the collection and analysis of the above three types of data, I obtained the results of the route which could maximize the profitability of my team.

Reflecting on Sales Route and Identifying Missing Factors

However, there was no significant increase in sales a week later. Therefore, I began to reflect on the sales route I had provided. First of all, I determined that the data source was reliable and clean. Secondly, I confirmed there were no significant mistakes during the process of data analysis.

Finding Factors Affecting Profit and New Customers

After careful thinking, I found that I had missed the following four factors which could affect the profit and the number of new customers.

1. Contract Rate

First is the contract rate, the ratio of the number business owners who had contracts with existing MERCHANT Company to the number of total business owners in the area. The probability of a business owner who had contract switching to a new company was lower than a business owner who did not have any contract. Hence, there was a need to find an area with a small contract rate to increase the number of new customers.

2. Cultural Background and Ethnicity

Secondly was the cultural background and ethnicity of local business owners. Through past customer feedback and user surveys, customers of different cultures and ethnicities had different needs of MERCHANT Services. Following these different needs, I formulated different sales plans.

3. Market Share of Competing Companies

Thirdly was the market share of other MERCHANT Services companies in the area. Each company used different characteristics. I made different sales plans for sales staff based on the characteristics of these companies.

Increase in Profit and New Customers

After I reformulated the analysis plan, the profits of our team increased by 30%. Further, the number of new users has increased by 20%. Notably, the new Asian users increased by 60%.