Imagine your marketing programs are under investigation. Let’s think for a moment about the last promotion or program you ran in your branches. If you’re the prime suspect, the person responsible for its success or failure – can you clear your name?

Every true crime junkie knows that to crack a case you have to have 3 key elements:

• Means – whether someone is capable of performing
• Motive – whether someone wants to perform
• Opportunity – whether someone has the chance to perform

And, of course, evidence - proof that points you to your key suspect.

Based on this logic you should be able to determine if your program helped achieve the goal you were reaching for, whether that goal is increasing branch foot traffic or finding new prospects. Let’s see how you score.

Rate your program on the following criteria (1 lots of room for improvement – 5 killed it)

Did you give your team the means?

• Was the program simple to understand and implement? 1 2 3 4 5
• Did you clearly communicate the plan to all levels of the internal team? Ex: Message from management, email with details, support as needed. 1 2 3 4 5
• Did you provide your branch with promotional flyers, emails, mailers etc they need to promote this? 1 2 3 4 5
• Did you explain how the success of this promotion would be measured? 1 2 3 4 5

Did they have opportunity?

• Did you clearly define the target or prospects for this promotion? 1  2  3  4  5
• Did you have the necessary staff to run the promotion? 1  2  3  4  5
• Did you clearly define the promotion timeline? 1  2  3  4  5
• Were there weekly progress check-ins with your team? 1  2  3  4  5
• Are the goals attainable? 1  2  3  4  5
• Did they have the supplies or product they need to keep up with demand generated from the promotion? 1  2  3  4  5

Do you have evidence?

• Did you measure and report on the success of this program? 1  2  3  4  5

Doing a post-mortem after any kind of promotion or incentive can be helpful for gauging its success. It can be tempting to run a one size fits all promotion to capture as many sales as you can. But the trick to real growth is focusing on the increasing the size and mix of your top customers that are driving profitability. Retaining customers and increasing order volume always costs less than attracting and converting new dealers.