Daily Goals, KPI’s, And Business Coach Advice For Your Business
Business Coach Guidance: Use Key Performance Indicators
Were those business coach leads not being checked because each member of the team was a bad person? No. Were the business coach leads not being checked because everyone was too busy? No. The business coach leads were not being checked because each member of the team was using a different time management and project management system, so there was no single source they could refer to, to ensure that all responsibilities were covered. One person was using the Slack Project Management System, one team member was using Basecamp, and yet another person was using the Yellow-Notepad-and-Huge-Sharpie-Marker method. Was it a problem with Basecamp or Slack? No. The problem was that everybody was using his or her own system.
Assign Key Performance Indicators and Follow-Up
Bestselling author Gino Wickman wrote a masterful book entitled Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business in which he describes at great length the importance of using Key Performance Indicators. These are also often referred to as KPIs by people who like to make life more confusing by using abbreviations to save syllables while speaking, thus adding hours to their work schedule as they constantly have to explain to new people what all of their business coach jargon means.
At the end of the day, key performance indicators are the measurable deliverables and the quantitative metrics that you will hold each member of your team accountable for achieving. By giving your team specific and actionable key performance indicators, you ensure that your team is focused on what matters and on what is truly the highest and best use of their time. The metrics also give you, as the leader, the data you need to know what is actually going on in your business.
These numbers will help you accurately predict whether your team is going to achieve their goals or not. By holding your team accountable for tracking their daily key performance indicators, you can keep your finger on the pulse of the business without having to be there with each member of your team, holding them accountable during every moment of their workday.
Download the template and an example of an effective Key Performance Indicator Dashboard by visiting – www.Thrive15.com/KeyPerformanceIndicatorDashboard
Story Time: I worked with a bridal business years ago that was experiencing almost zero success with their online marketing efforts. When I met with the three members of the online marketing team, things got a little intense at first because all of the team members refused to allow me to quantify their work performance. However, the owner was serious about changing her life and moving beyond just barely surviving, so she told her employees that compliance with the business coach was mandatory. One by one, I met with them and determined that the following was supposed to be happening:
- One (one-thousand word) blog post was supposed to be written every business day (25 per month).
- Five (one-thousand word) articles were supposed to be written every business day (125 per month).
- Two social media updates were supposed to be happening every business day (50 per month).
- Two online ads were supposed to be measured each morning for effectiveness.
- All inbound Internet leads were supposed to be called, texted, and emailed every day until they were reached.
- One customer review was to be gathered every business day on Facebook or Google’s review service (25 reviews per month).
As I invested the time to meet with and business coach each person, they assured me that they were “doing their best” and that it “wasn’t possible to do any more.” When the data was finally collected, I discovered that the following was actually happening:
- One (one-thousand word) blog post was not being written every business day (two per month were actually being posted).
- Five (one-thousand word) articles were not being written every business day (four per month were actually being posted).
- Two social media updates were not happening every business day (three per month were actually happening).
- Online ads had never been measured for effectiveness (resulting in wasted money everywhere as the advertisements were actually taking visitors to a landing page that hadn’t even been set up yet).
- Inbound Internet leads were not being called, texted, and emailed every business day until they were reached (leads were being called once per week at the very maximum).
- A total of one customer review had been gathered from Facebook or Google’s review service.
By simply going into this business and teaching the business owner the importance of scheduling a specific daily follow-up time with her team members, we were able to change this person’s life. The owner was able to go from the bottom of Google’s search engine results to the top within 60 days. Without exaggeration, the owner of the business was able to grow her gross revenue by over 40% within just two months. When are you going to schedule a follow-up with your people?
To create your weekly Effective Management, Follow-up, and Training Calendar, visit: www.Thrive15.com/EffectiveManagementFollowUpandTrainingCalendar
[1] Create daily Key Performance Indicators for each position in the company
[2] Create Effective Management, Follow-up, and Training Calendar
The reason why the system was not working in that bridal business was because nobody was following up, EVER. The owner was blindly trusting each team member as they guided her off of the financial cliff. Do not let this happen to you. You must focus on clearly defining the key performance indicators for every member of your team and holding them accountable by scheduling a set time for regular follow-ups. This is the only way to ensure that your business avoids this struggle.
My friend, you must picture the key performance indicators as being like the dials on your grill (I love grilling). When you are grilling a certain type of meat, you should be able to turn up the heat to get the sear you want. When you are grilling steak and shrimp kebabs however, you want to slow cook those babies and you should be able to do that, too. This is your business and just like with your grill, you need to have the dials in place to be able to apply the measured heat necessary to achieve the desired results.
It’s not important that you measure every activity that every member of your team is doing every day (unless you are an obsessive Major League Baseball fan, which I used to be as a kid). However, it is important that you take the time to measure the most important key performance indicators in each area of your business. When you tightly measure key performance indicators, you are then able to focus more of your time on the fewer and more important action items that must be accomplished to generate the biggest reward for your company.
“What gets measured gets done.” -Gino Wickman (Author of bestselling book Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business)
I do not want to provide you with a technological justification for not actively holding your team accountable for the achievement of their daily key performance indicators, but in a perfect world where leprechauns ride unicorns and where your budget allows you to do so, you would ideally set up systems in which key performance indicators are either scored by each member of your team or tabulated through automation so that you have accurate feedback that is updated on a weekly, daily, or even real-time basis.
Mentally marinate on this example. Let’s say that you are a solid basketball player and you are playing against another solid player in a competitive game of basketball. Although each of you is over the age of 30, you both care about the outcome of the game because you have a bet riding on it. Before you began, you said, “Listen Justin, I am going to beat you and when I do, you are going to have to buy me the steak of my choice!”
Justin said, “Dude, there is no way in the world that you are going to beat me. I’m younger than you and I’m in better shape.”
You then said, “Listen, I’ve got old man moves bro. I’ve got the scoop shot, sky hook, and the power pump fake. You are going down!”
During intense situations like this where winning matters, what do we do? We keep score! And why do we keep score? Because watching and playing socialist basketball is stupid. When you are running an efficient and profitable business, you need to empower each member of your team by holding him or her accountable to the daily achievement of one or two daily key performance indicators. You must hold your teammates accountable to meeting their daily goals. When they fail to meet their daily goals, you must give them feedback, coaching, and pushing. When they achieve their daily goals, you must give them praise, bonuses, or both.
“Any fourth grade history student knows socialism has failed in every country, at every time in history.” -Vladimir Putin (President of Russia since 2012)
When you are formulating these daily key performance indicators, you must make them super easy to understand. Your daily key performance indicators should be measurable such as number of memberships sold per day, number of calls made per day, or percentage of times that customers are successfully cross-sold or upsold. It’s very important that each member of your team understands their daily key performance indicators and how their achievement or failure to achieve their daily goals affects the business and their teammates.
[1] Set up a real-time, digitally calculated feedback system that displays key performance indicator metrics