In a competitive landscape with countless foodservice providers, selling to restaurants and other foodservice customers can present serious challenges. To be successful, companies need to employ comprehensive data-driven approaches to understand the foodservice industry, deliver marketing and sales solutions to prospects, and streamline operations. Data-driven account-based data systems are the way forward for penetrating the foodservice market.
Account-based data systems go beyond basic customer data providing comprehensive insights into the food service industry, allowing companies to build a holistic understanding about prospects and shape up successful sales and marketing strategies. With the proliferation of customer data across the food service industry, the need for advanced restaurant account-based data systems is greater than ever. To ensure successful results in terms of sales, marketing and operations, here are the top 10 things to consider when evaluating restaurant account-based data systems.
1. Menu data: Effective account-based data systems should equipped with comprehensive menu data, to provide a deep understanding into the food and beverage items restaurants serve. This allows companies to accurately target their sales and marketing approaches based on the customer’s menu selection.
2. Robust segmentation: Successful foodservice providers tailor their sales and marketing approach based on detailed insights extracted from granular segmentation. Segmentation helps companies effectively target accounts and build better pipelines. Comprehensive segmentation approaches should evaluate customers based on socio-economic information, geographic regions, menu items, and restaurant technology.
3. Competitive information: It is crucial to understand the competitive landscape to synthesize the restaurant industry trends and develop the right sales and marketing strategies. With advanced account-based data systems, companies are better positioned to understand the competitive market, by analyzing competitors’ digital footprints and researching relevant industry trends. Having accurate and up-to-date competitive data is essential for understanding the restaurant industry.
4. Restaurant analytics: Advanced analytics based on customer data gives companies a window into real-time restaurant operations. With access to restaurant analytics, companies can effectively identify and segment the market, optimize product offerings, and devise the right sales and marketing approaches to most effectively reach accounts.
5. CRM integration: Companies often use customer relationship management (CRM) to manage their sales process. To be effective, account-based data systems should be integrated with your CRM allowing you to quickly retrieve customer data and update it on your CRM in real time.
6. Technology coverage: Restaurant technology plays an increasingly important role in the foodservice industry. It is vital for companies to understand how technology is used and how it impacts their sales and marketing processes. Account-based data systems equip you with insights about customer technology and provide the means to evaluate which technology works best for your business.
7. Automation & recommendation engines: Restaurant account-based data systems should leverage automated algorithms and recommendation engines to improve accuracy, speed up research, and provide better decision-making support. Automation and recommendation engines can increase operational efficiency and offer customizable approaches to target prospects.
8. Centralized insights: Having all the data and insights centralized is essential for efficient market research. It allows teams to derive meaningful and actionable insights quickly, resulting in more accurate market research and better decision-making.
9. Scalable: As your business grows, so should your data capabilities. Advanced account-based data systems should not only be able to power insights from large data sets, but also be able to scale up operations as your business grows.
10. Cost-effective: It is also important that your account-based data system be affordable. Look for data providers that offer reasonable and cost-effective services so you don’t end up spending too much money on data.
By leveraging the power of data-driven account-based data systems, companies are better able to penetrate the food service industry and gain a competitive edge. To do this effectively, an account-based data system should be equipped with comprehensive data such as menu data, robust segmentation, competitive insights, restaurant analytics, CRM integration, technology coverage, automated and recommendation engines, centralized insights, scalability, and cost-effectiveness.
