Do you really know your Business?
One of my biggest regrets starting up was that no business book was telling me to track/measure the key numbers from the beginning — where would we be now if we had?
I always believed that there were too many variables in my business and that it was an art rather than a science with our sales process, I was very wrong.
Data is essential to truly understand your business, your team and your industry. Without it you are ‘chancing it’ and propelling forward rudderless hoping everything works out. You don’t even know your company potential or limitations.
At our company, we are applying stats across all facets of our business and it provides incredible data for us to improve as individuals and as a company. We understand what is actually happening using real data and can apply our experience along with the other non-measurable factors to come to more accurate conclusions.
By knowing our metrics, we can steer the ship by spotting trends and ensure we avoid major issues. We have a finger on the pulse of our business.
Ask yourself
- Do you know how many potential leads there are in your market? (What is your potential?)
- Do you know what your market capitalization is? (What is your share of the market?)
- How many leads do you capture? What is your conversion rate? (Where can you improve?)
- Which type of leads convert best? What marketing method most efficiently captures those leads? (Are you efficient?)
Understand your business
Some years ago, we almost let a very talented new employee go due to lack of sales. The role was primarily to deliver sales and new customers, but it just wasn’t happening, month after month. The individual didn’t have the experience to understand why sales weren’t landing, he was having as many meetings as his colleagues and had all the same tools and training.
If it had been 3 years earlier before we were tracking and logging all key statistics, our only conclusion could be that he was just not a good salesman and he was screwing up the meetings.
However, by looking deeper into the statistics and the type of leads that he was processing, it became clear that the issue was not the sellers competence but the demographics of the leads. By making a small change to the lead generation direction things changed rapidly and the employee started to flourish.
It sounds so logical, but these things are very difficult to see without tangible data. It allows you to see clearly and practically without emotion. We can help our employees improve more quickly and spot problems early.
Understand your market
Another example, in the early years of the business, we based our growth plan off our assumptions of the market conditions. We were positive that we could make a successful company, but could not see that there was room to have a company that was more than 10 employees….there was just not the room in our market. We were very sure that this was the case and set the self-determined barrier accordingly.
However, once we started logging and tracking statistics, we could see the large number of leads we were getting, how many we can convert and what was left on the table. It became clear that there was much more potential than we imagined.
Now that we know how many leads we needed per sales person, we know how many leads were available in the market, we know the historical conversion rate of new employees — therefore we can make very confident decisions that we have room to expand our team.
Now we are on a path approaching doubling that initial maximum barrier — and we will continue to analyze and track to see how far we can safely move forward.
Start tracking
I urge you regardless the size of your organization to start tracking, many industries already have tools for this, but most service or product related businesses don’t have or use the data well enough to get the full benefits.
- Have your team log the demographics of your leads (Who are these people?)
- Research your market to understand how many potential customers there really are.
- Log sales meetings or sales opportunities.
- Mark down how many are converted (Analyze the non-converted and see if there is a pattern — what can you change to improve the conversion — consider the customer journey)
There is so much more you achieve and control when you really know what is happening!
Stewart Stanbra is a founder of CSUSA and the Pursue Group, he is helping driven people Pursue Ambition. Please follow for more stories on Entrepreneurship, Startups, Leadership and Self Care. Any claps are hugely appreciated!
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