Simple tips for getting metrics that matter
Analytics – We love ‘em. Dashboards with drill-down charts and dynamic filters. Whether you are analyzing site traffic with Google analytics, Kissmetrics etc or looking at your sales pipeline in your CRM, top of mind should be, “Why is it so, and do I care?”.
Remembering that metrics are primarily used for guiding our decisions (albeit sometimes we use them for PR etc), be careful not to fall into the trap of measuring things you can’t impact.
Questions to ask when presented with data/charts:
1) Why does this matter right now?
2) What does it mean?
3) What are we going to do differently as a result?
Questions to ask when building reports/analytics:
1) What are the key goals for this period?
2) What are the measurable steps to achieving those goals when broken down as predictive indicators?
If you ask these questions, then when an advisor asks you, “So what?” you can respond with the specific actions you will take as a result of the insight.
Secondly, if your numbers are going in the wrong direction, you will be able to explain exactly why and what you can do to rectify it.
Of course, the best analytics are ones that wave a flag when you need to take action, rather than require you to trawl through data. Over at http://www.whoto.com we have built a sales intelligence tool for busy B2B salespeople that does just that. We have robots that tell sales people about competitive relationship threats and why they should care… Even more to come in the weeks ahead.
