BLOW IT UP

Client: Our close rate dropped last quarter, and we can’t figure out why.

Me: What does the data say?

Client: We don’t have good sales data.

Me: Do you have a documented sales process?

Client: Yes, but we do but we can’t measure it.

Me: Blow it up. It’s worthless. It’s like giving an athlete a training plan but never telling her if she’s getting stronger or not.

Not so diplomatic on my part, but true. A process is worthless if it doesn’t give specific steps to measure, so you can diagnose problems and test solutions. Most of us rank process documentation right up there with going to the dentist, but it doesn’t have to be that bad. As a matter of fact, if you follow the approach I’m about to lay out, you can build the skeleton of a process and KPI’s for a key area of your business in 30 minutes. We’ll start at the end with the data we want to come out of the process, and then come back around with the process steps to support it.

Step 1: Step away from the business, clear your mind, and ask yourself, “what do I want to happen?” These are the milestones of the process that will end up being measured. Think of it like a recipe or a mathematical formula. “I want this to happen, then this to happen, then this… and the result will be this.” Here’s an (abbreviated) example of what you might come up with:

Step 2: Build a Process Scorecard containing the inputs/steps and result from above and start measuring. Don’t worry about being perfect; consistency is more important than accuracy. If you’re consistent, even an inaccurate measurement will tell you if you are moving in the right direction.

Step 3: Design what happens at each milestone above. What does a great marketing event look like? What do you do when you get  a sales prospect? How do you score a safety inspection?

Step 4: Build the steps that connect the milestones. For example, you might have a few steps for a drip campaign that touches marketing event attendees to move them to the point of being considered a Prospect. On the safety side, there might be a reinspection sub-process that happens after remediation efforts are completed.

And there you go - you have the skeleton of your process and KPI’s. It will obviously take more than 30 minutes to build out the details, but you can delegate that work. And I encourage you to delegate that work, because in doing so you will create built-in process champions on your team.

In about 90 days you will have a clean, brief (one-to-two page) process that gives you the predictability and control you need in a key area of your business, along with a scorecard that allows you to continuously improve the process. And the next time you have an issue and ask, “what does the data say?” you will get an answer.

Do you want to go even deeper on data in your business? If so, call me to discuss the four data types you need and how you can get them.