Why zip codes in Salesforce.com?

June 1, 2015

After developing and managing CRM systems for 25 years, it became clear to us that organizations are missing out on large revenue opportunities.

We had discussions with well over a thousand people in management, marketing and sales and the outcome was always the same:

  • Our CRM database is growing rapidly, making it hard to find information.
  • Sales can’t manage customers across cities, counties or metropolitan areas.
  • We don’t know revenue potential across geographic areas.

Every discussion leads to more unanswered questions:

  • How do we know we’re adding sales reps in areas with enough potential?
  • Are we spending marketing dollars in areas where we can generate leads?
  • Does the economic outlook for an area impact our chances to win deals?
  • How much more growth can we capture in local markets?

These unanswered questions cost any company millions of dollars in lost revenue. When marketing and sales spend time and effort in geographical areas with slim growth potential, they are leaving greater opportunities in other locations open for their competition.

Market GeoData Insights

 

Most organizations do not have the right data to find the best areas for revenue growth.

 

Pinpoint market potential with zip codes

Zip code data have been proven to drive sales success. There’s a tremendous amount of geographic data related to zip codes, that must be used to understand the market potential and track sales performance.

Zip code-based market potential, for example, is the number of companies your team targets, and the number of decision makers to be contacted. Market potential can be demographics data based on age, income, and spending preferences. There are thousands of zip code-based datasets, describing your company’s potential.

Territory Management

 

Most companies sit on a gold mine of their own market and sales data! But the highly detailed data is unfortunately locked away in invoicing systems and databases that cannot be easily be accessed by marketing and sales teams.

What happens when existing CRM data is structured by zip code?

What if we would put all zip codes into your Salesforce CRM system? Next, we could automatically structure all existing CRM data by Zip code; so all data is highly organized and useful. Every zip code would have the associated city name, county, metropolitan area, number of businesses your team is targeting and many more data points that help describe your true market potential.

Your CRM database will be much more useful when your team can search and report all data by zip code, city, county, sales territory, metropolitan area, sales region, state, census region and much more.

 

Combine external market potential with your CRM data

When external geographical data – number of decision makers and companies your team should target – is added to each Zip code, many of the original questions are immediately answered. It’s now possible to pinpoint a geographic area’s potential and compare with the number of existing customers.

Salesforce report: Compare the number of potential customers – “Software Publishers” – with existing Leads and Accounts. Review activity level and won opportunities.

The difference between an area’s potential number of customers and the number of existing customers is a true eye-opener. Having instant access to this data changes how companies focus their marketing and sales resources. The data is often used to optimize sales territories and empower the sales team to focus efforts in the right areas and beat sales quotas.

Adding zip code-based sales data to your CRM data

Next type of geographic data to add is your internal data for sold products and services on an aggregated zip code level. The data can be from your own sales, channel sales or from partners.

 

Drive success by aggregating data by zip code in real-time

It’s a huge upside to automatically combine existing CRM data and zip code based business data.

When adding external data over sales potential with internal sales data, your organization is creating a true competitive advantage.

Zip code-based GeoData is proven to connect you faster with the right customers in the right geographic areas.

Get zip codes and GeoData in Salesforce now; you can’t afford to wait.