Tell Your Story — The Case For Data & Analytics
User Case Studies In Early Adoption & Fractional Support
It is a common story. New business leaders avoid investing in data & analytics. It is too expensive. It can wait. They focus on growing their revenue. Analytics is a game for much larger companies...
Perhaps it is a fair point? Hiring an analyst is likely to cost you close to a half million over three years (fully loaded). It would take a lot of Return On that Investment to get the payback you need(ROI). A consulting engagement is going to run between $25-$100K at rock bottom pricing and with little real Return. Maybe young businesses really should defer? Focus on sales, growth, and traction — it is for the better.
Let me offer you a different story, several in fact. These are the stories of my clients. They are the stories of companies who opted for a different tale, one that included fractional data & analytic support. These companies invested early in order to better tell their story. They invested in their own people, not someone else’s software or sales goals. They invested in sales, growth, and traction — because that is what successful business do. They did it through analytics.
Reporting Made Easy
One of our first clients had a simple request. They needed a plan. An execution plan is not a terribly interesting topic. An execution plan for compliance reporting perhaps less so. But cutting a half year investment down to just a few weeks and securing a multi-million dollar funding round shortly there after — is one hell of a great punch line!
If you are raising money, it is important to have your numbers in order. Early in your company’s life cycle, it is unlikely that you are going to have a Business Intelligence specialist on the payroll. But smart reporting is exactly what this client needed to focus on telling their story. Perhaps it was a gamble? But what surely wasn’t, was saving nearly five months of development time. Even if they had not secured the funding earlier, the ROI on development time alone made this a great investment.
Driving Sales
Great salesmanship is story telling. But sales presentations with real numbers and real financial models are often far more effective. Who can resist a great story with great numbers?
Honestly, this a story we’ve helped tell many times. Young companies like to invest in sales, but each story tends to be a little different. We have conducted sales workshops for clients, educating their sales team on analytics and business intelligence. We have designed money slides for sales decks. But most notably — we once created a multi-level P&L tool for a client whose sales team used it “on the fly” and in front of CFO’s of major corporations like Home Depot & Macy’s.
The head of sales for this organization was thrilled. All of his people were finally on the same page AND confident in the numbers they were providing. How is that for empowering your people? Data & analytics can close sales!
Verifying The Stories of Others
I love to help my clients tell their story. Better still, to grow their business quickly and profitably. Sometimes that means helping to validate the stories of others.
Clients often ask us to vet talent. This is actually where some of our largest clients have struggled. But whether it is help in sourcing, job listing, resume review, phone screening, or other hiring support — it is a critical value prop for any business.
It is estimated that a bad hire costs a company between $25–30K. Why would you not invest a few hundred in getting that right? We track our results regularly for this service. Those whose stories we’ve vetted have a perfect track record. With dozens of clients to speak of — this is a service with a near exponential ROI!
Sharing The Story?
“We are all finally on the same page!”
I have heard that accolade so many times. Oddly, it a service that people tend to drag their feet at. Consensus building is difficult for internal parties. It is difficult when you believe the facilitators have an agenda. When you can get an objective, measurement-minded, and result-oriented third-party to conduct it —suddenly it is “exactly what we needed!”.
For my company, consensus building is often part of the sales process. We get paid for the work that follows. But our clients have reacted so positively to just that simple session, it drives incredible repeat business! One client, a company in the artificial intelligence space, brought us in to conduct a consensus building workshop on analytics. They had wonderful stories to share, but each was different! We offered them a framework to unify their story. Their CFO declared it an “investment that repays itself almost daily”.
The Right Priorities, The Right Plan, The Right Outcome
Prioritization is a huge component of your story. So many young companies make prioritization decisions with little more than gut feel. That can work… until it doesn’t. When it finally fails, there is little to learn from it.
Prioritization is an investment decision and one your company should be learning from. Sitting through dozens of pitches by young companies, I am often struck by how poorly they react to questions on their prioritization process. Truth be told, they are winging it.
I am always excited by that “gotcha” moment at the end of a prioritization consultation. New perspective, new frameworks, and clearer decisions — often in less than an hour. A client in business development for a Fortune 500 company recently admitted, “I just cancelled six hours of meetings, because I can get my answers in less than 35 minutes on the phone with you!” If only he wasn’t routinely 20 minutes late to those calls, I would have a much better billable.
The stories don’t end there. There are plenty more to share but there is a simple moral to all of them. Your story is the most powerful element of your business. Invest in it!
Fractional data & analytic support is available at subscription level pricing. Better still, it is available at start-up speeds! It is an investment in your story, in your business, and in your people. But perhaps best of all, it is an investment that will make your story more powerful than anyone else’s. It can differentiate you from your competitors and set you apart from the masses.
Whether you need to pitch or sell, prioritize or build consensus, hire or train, create or optimize — a simple flat rate subscription model is capable of providing the leverage and confidence you need to make a difference. Don’t settle for a common story. Invest in one that can set you apart and put you on a path to real success. Give us a call.
