How Well Do YOU Measure Up?
There are so many different measurements that you can put in place in your business.
You can measure almost anything you decide as somewhere, someone will have found a method or formula you can implement. You can spend days on the internet, fascinating yourself with new metrics that you’d never even thought of. The internet is the biggest library in the world and full of exciting ideas and methods that you can use to fill up your monthly management reports, if that turns you on.
But What Can You Measure ?
You can analyse how well your sales funnel is working by measuring the different conversion rates of prospects moving from one stage to the next.
You can measure the lead the time between an initial contact to that person or organisation becoming a customer of yours.
You can measure the efficiency of the different methods you use to attract those leads, to give an insight into which channel works best for your business.
You can measure the effectiveness of effectiveness of each member of your sales team by the amount of business they close.
You can measure how efficient your delivery process is, whether that be selling products, delivering a service of both.
You can measure the quality of the service you give at different stages of your fulfilment.
You can measure how much a customer spends in their lifetime with you and the products they have bought from you.
You can measure how much a customer loves your business and the value you give, through customer satisfaction surveys.
You can measure the efficiency of person in their respective roles by setting benchmarks and output targets you may have set in collaboration of your management team or advisors.
You can even measure productivity spikes and troughs that occur throughout the day, so you can manage those people accordingly.
You can measure the revenue you generate, the costs of delivery you incur and the overheads of running your business, so can understand where savings can be made.
But is money the best thing to measure and are you measuring things you can actually influence ?
But What Do I Measure In My Business ?
We definitely advocate the need to measure certain areas of your business. It’s the only way to get a real grip on your business performance. These numbers are what we call KPI’s, Key Performance Indicators.
Some of our clients have asked us a few times how much work needs to be put in to achieve a certain result. In most cases, we can’t answer that because every business works differently and what fits one may not fit another.
So we urge them to look at their numbers as these should give them a pretty big clue, (and if they haven’t been measuring them, we may administer that kick up the arse that we are getting known for).
However, anything you do measure in your business must be meaningful to you and the data you are measuring must be reliable. You only want the figures or ratios that give you facts about your business, identify areas where you may be able to improve, establish benchmarks that help you to plan and hopefully give you insights into where your business is unique at best or at least leading in your market.
Of course, it goes without saying that if the data isn’t being collated accurately, then it’s going to be misleading at best and won’t be informative enough to make any business decisions against. You must have every confidence in the data collection process before you can start using it for any purpose.
You can waste an awful lot of time measuring and creating stats that fall into the category of ‘nice to have’ but not the more important category of ‘valuable to know’. It’s the second category that will lead you to make meaningful and informed decisions that help your business to grow.
So How Do I Set KPI’s For My Business ?
One of our specialities is helping business owners uncover the right numbers that will give the best insights into their specific business and situations. We have the experienced insight that you won’t find on the internet, experience that we’ve amassed over the years helping small businesses get on the right track for them.
You must be measuring not only what is relevant to your business but also those stats that will help you take control and drive the business forward. One of our favourite workshops to run is Six Numbers To Run Your Business. We dig into a business and work out the number that define success and failure. With some interesting Camel Racing scenarios thrown in to get you thinking about numbers.
So, take the time to think about what you need to measure, how to measure that effectively and then how best to utilise that measurement to control and elevate your business.
So If you’re struggling with working out measuring whether you are going backwards or forwards get in touch.
We can help you to identify those areas and numbers that you really need to know and by focusing on improving them, will help your business to grow.
Press the buttons below to find out how we can help you see how well you measure up.