Ask Brian Diamond how he built Quality Home Exteriors into a multimillion-dollar company in just three years and he’ll tell you it’s because he thinks of his company as a sales and marketing organization first and an exterior remodeler second.
“If we wanted to sell cupcakes tomorrow, we can do cupcakes,” says Diamond, the company’s owner and president.
Exaggeration aside, Diamond’s point is that he focuses on two things: how to grow sales and how to drive leads. And he uses technology to improve both. “When I picked this business up, I knew from the beginning that tech was going to play a big part in our success,” he says.
To that end, he relies heavily on improveit360, his customer relationship management system, to produce reports that tell him how the business is doing and how current performance compares with historical data. He also brings tech into his canvassing to better know customers and hit leads while they’re hot. But no matter what he’s doing, it’s all about the numbers. “You can’t manage what you can’t measure,” he says.
For example, he used data to discover when his call center workers’ output seemed to be dwindling and scheduled a break for them at that time. He uses a similar ongoing approach with salespeople to see who is performing best and address those who need help.
“If you ask my guys, they’ll know their numbers,” he says. “I want them to go in and not only look at their reports but also the reports of their peers. That’s what really amps them up.”