The spend that works, and the spend that does not
You know what the listing costs. SaleShade tells you how many enquiries it brought and how many became sales. The division is yours to do.
The spend nobody measures
You can price every one of them. You cannot price what any of them produced.
You can tell anyone exactly what each of those costs you. To the rupee, without checking.
Now ask what each one produced. The honest answer is a feeling — the portal gives some enquiries, I think. And a feeling is what you are using to decide whether to renew.
What you can tell anyone- The listing portal — renewed on a feeling, every year
- The hoarding at the crossing — and the newspaper insert at Diwali
- The hoarding at the crossing — to the rupee, without checking
- The stall at the exhibition — stall, display, travel, four people for a week
- The Diwali insert — and every boosted post
What you cannot- What each one produced — the honest answer is a feeling
- "The portal gives some enquiries, I think" — and a feeling is what you renew on
The source is recorded when the enquiry arrives
Every enquiry carries its source, entered at the moment the person is captured — the walk-in, the phone call, the website form, the portal, the referral.
Nobody reconstructs it afterwards, because nobody can. This is why most businesses cannot answer the question at all: not for want of a report, but because the information was never written down in the first place.
Two counts, per source
How many enquiries came from each source.
How many enquiries came from each sourceNot a score, not a rating, not an index somebody invented. A count you can check against your own memory of the quarter.
How many of them became salesThe one that matters. A portal producing forty enquiries that turn into two sales is worse than a hoarding producing four that turn into three — and counting enquiries alone tells you the opposite.
How many of them became sales.Both counts run over whatever period you choose, and one period can be set against another. This quarter against last. This Diwali against the one before.
Which is how you tell a source that has stopped working from a month that was quiet for everybody.
You already know what each one costs you
SaleShade does not ask you what you spend.
You know that better than any software does, and entering it would be one more thing to keep updated.
What you have never had is the other half. Put them together and the sum takes a minute:
Volume flatters. The number that decides whether to book the stall again is the bottom row.This is the one place the software pays for itself in a number you can calculate. Most showrooms pay for three or four listings and boosted posts every month with no idea which one works.
After a quarter you can see enquiries per source against what each one costs you — and cut the ones that produce nothing.
The decision most owners reachStop paying for what produces nothing. Most get there eventually — usually a year later than they should.
The decision almost nobody reachesPut more into what is working. That one costs money upfront, so it needs proof rather than a feeling. This is where the proof comes from.
Referral is a source too
The architect who sends three customers a year.
The carpenter who has been recommending you since before you had a website. The customer who told his brother.
Recorded as sources, they can be counted like anything else — and once you can see who is actually sending people, you can do something about it.
The numbers take a quarter to be worth anything
This is not useful on day one.
It needs a few months of recorded enquiries before the numbers mean anything, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you a chart rather than an answer.
But the recording starts the day you go live, and it costs your team nothing extra — the source is captured as part of taking down a name and a number.
See it on your own sources.
Ask for a demo