The 4 Meaningful Metrics Your Business Should Be Tracking

In case you’re interested...

For more strategies on using LinkedIn to generate more business, grab a free copy of my book: It’s the road map to connecting with prospects, engaging with and converting new clients, and levelling up your consulting business. - Click Here

Let’s dive in….

All this sales and marketing activity generated by The Influencer Project can get you busy:

In fact, you’re so busy connecting, engaging and converting that it can get disorientating. What exactly should you be tracking?

Measuring the progress of your business towards pre-defined goals is important - otherwise you might find that you’re busy chasing your own tail - or simply following somebody else’s goals:

What’s the answer? What will keep you on track towards your goals?

Complicated spreadsheets: probably not the answer

Clients often show us huge spreadsheets to demonstrate just how well they’re tracking their progress.

But you know the saying that you ‘can’t see the wood for the trees’? Well, that applies here. There is so much detail on these spreadsheets that it’s difficult to make out anything of note; you can’t track key trends at a glance - so most people tend to switch off amidst the blur.

They don’t actually take the time to interpret what they’re measuring, as it’s just too complex to make out.

Do yourself a favour and simplify it.

If you want to see what’s going on in your business and make adjustments on the fly, make it more agile by only tracking the meaningful metrics.

Meaningful metrics

In the traditional approach to sales funnels, we would measure cold leads (at the top), then warm leads, then hot leads, etc.

At the Influencer Project, the funnel has four levels - and we need to measure each one. It’s very simple:

1.      Top: NEW CONNECTIONS - anyone who is now connected to you and who you can influence (through email, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook) by what you say, do, and teach.

2.      NEW CONVERSATIONS - those you’ve spoken to directly and have received at least one response from (not just outgoing emails) via email, personal messaging, or phone (double points!). You have started to qualify interest and determine ‘fit’.

3.      NEW OPPORTUNITIES - your pipeline. If conversations lead to opportunities, you start to understand the dollar value of your marketing and what the salespeople are responsible for dealing with. Includes any proposals or outlines of commercial arrangements sent to prospects.

4.      Bottom: NEW CLIENTS - these are deals: contracts signed, deposits paid or money in the bank (all quantifiable).

The best part? All these elements are very easy to measure: any good CRM software should be able to track them: set up stages in the software and start measuring them.

And there’s another big advantage too…

Clearly defined sales & marketing boundaries

By focusing on the above metrics, you create a clear line between sales and marketing responsibilities.

We see many clients who try to fix a ‘marketing problem’ when, in actual fact, the problem is sales. Sometimes we see the reverse too - but rarely. Many business owners freeze when it comes to sales and kid themselves that the problem lies with marketing - and often they throw more money at it unsuccessfully.

In the above model, there is no confusion.

Marketing puts your message into the marketplace and communicates and connects with people in two ways: passive (creating awareness) and active (creating YES or NO interest).

Sales starts with conversations (there may be some crossover with marketing here): from then on the sales system takes over the responsibility for getting results.

Essentially, marketing is responsible for the CONNECTIONS and maybe some of the new CONVERSATIONS. But sales is responsible for OPPORTUNITIES and NEW CLIENTS.

Once you are able to measure this, and divide it accordingly, you can be sure that you are pulling the right levers in your business to fix whatever is under-performing.

Remember…

• If you’re not generating enough conversations, you’re not asking “would you be interested?” enough;
• If you’re getting conversation but no opportunities, there’s too much chitty chat and not enough sales qualification;
• If opportunities exist but there are no deals, you have a s sales conversion issue.

Increase clarity and insight into your business by tracking the right meaningful metrics - and it will become much easier to measure progress towards your goals. 

P.s. Whenever you’re ready… here are 3 ways I can help you grow your business with LinkedIn

1. Join the Influencer Boardroom and connect with other advisors and consultants who are scaling too: It’s our new Facebook community where smart advisors and consultants learn to generate more purpose, profit and power. - Click Here

2. Join Our Implementation Program and be a Case Study: I’m putting together a new consulting case study group inside The Influencer Project this month… stay tuned for details. If you’d like to work with me on your client-getting and business growth plans using LinkedIn… just send me a message and put “Case Study” in it and I’ll get you more info.

3. Work with me and my team privately: If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take you from 6 to 7 figures and level things up… just send me a message and put “Private” in the first line… tell me a little about your business and what you’d like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details.