When we can take the emotion out of work that demands results, we can focus on performance and goals. Emotion clouds the true picture when it comes to measuring your sales results, productivity or quality of service.
If you find yourself in meetings that are all about people’s opinions on the state of things, then your team is missing more objective ways of making decisions. It is a painful way to manage a business, but unfortunately all too common.
The decisions that need to be made should come from quantifiable data. But this means that you have things set up to make clearer decisions. Here are some ways to ensure you have this structure and culture for a strategic advantage.
Know what you want to measure
There are key metrics that matter. If you hit these metrics consistently then they cause disproportionate successes in your business.
It could be the number of social signals you see that drive referrals. It could be a quality score your customers provide over hundreds of service calls to indicate how loyal your subscribers will be.
There is a cause and effect that has to be captured within your business. Focus in on the causal triggers that make the largest impact and make those the focal point of what you review regularly.
Ensure your systems capture data in real-time
As you identify what really matters in your business, ensure that you have systems that funnel information to a dashboard view that you can look at any moment. This can help you dial into the behaviors of your team or your customers.
If you want to see the impact of a sale, an analytics system that lets you see heat maps on a site can help you change the offer quickly to see the effect and tweak for the most revenue.
If you find that your sales team gets more engagement when they call in the afternoon from your CRM data, then you can structure sales times based on the new best practices.
Always be testing
As you have robust systems that provide feedback, turn that information into quick actions via testing. You may have a hypothesis about what will create interest in a campaign. With list segmentation and A/B testing, you can try out a couple of ideas and see how they perform.
You are looking for the quick small wins to expand on. Taking small bets based on immediate feedback from data affords you the opportunity to see if something experimental might take root. It’s a form of R&D that will help you continue to innovate.
Putting Your Systems Together
Your business will have its own requirements. Your employees, customers and vendors all bring a different mix of what is important.
The great thing about today’s business systems is that you can integrate and pivot quickly. Your opportunity to grow your business comes down to your desire to continually improve and use data in smart, efficient ways.
Think about how you are making decisions. If you had the right systems and approach, imagine the opportunity to optimize and tap into the powerful forces that can boost your sales, cost savings or customer satisfaction.
It starts with the mindset that managing by facts has a rigor that reaps great rewards. In our hyper-competitive business environment today, it’s an edge that you may not be able to afford to ignore.