Why do I need to know the numbers?
I was out to lunch with a business friend the other day, we were discussing how the power of “knowing your numbers” can transform a business. I happily admit that I am a bit of a numbers nerd but it is so powerful to know the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that make a difference in your business. KPIs are more than just your profit and loss numbers; although those are important stats to know as well. If you are new to KPIs, let me walk you through a few that apply to almost every business.
Example KPIs
- Lead Quality (What % of your leads are serious sales prospects?)
- Conversion rates (What % of your proposals are you closing into sales)
- The number of touchpoints it take to close a client
- Fulfillment time for each product or service.
When you know these numbers, you can reverse engineer your business system to reach your goals. Without knowing these numbers, you may be spending your time and money on things that are not getting you the real results you desire.
Top 3 excuses for not knowing your KPIs:
- “I don’t know what numbers are most important for my business.”
- “I am not sure how to find the info I need to calculate the KPIs.”
- “It takes too much effort to find the numbers and calculate the KPIs each month.”
If you are struggling with knowing the numbers you need and how to set it up, that is something that we can help you with at Business Made Simple. You can grab a spot on my calendar here to start that discussion.
Are you ready to start automating your KPI’s instead of forcing yourself to pull the numbers each month and crunch the numbers? Insightly can be a great solution for automating your KPIs.
Insightly for KPIs
Once you know the KPI numbers that want, make a list of the data points needed to calculate those KPIs. Next, build the tracking for those data points into your Insightly system. I will show you below how to track the data points you need, for my example KPIs, in Insightly.
- Lead Quality
- Track your lead source for each incoming lead.
- Create a report that shows you how many of those leads are converting into sales opportunities.
- Track that lead source all the way through the close of your opportunity to see how much money you are making from each lead source.
- Conversion rates
- Use opportunities to track and manage your sales process
- An opportunity report will show you how many sales you are closing and how many you are losing.
- Create a report to see what stage of the sales process clients are dropping off at. This will help you know where to start improving your sales process.
- Track the reasons why your opportunity is won or lost.
- The number of touchpoints it take to close a client
- Store your emails, tasks, and events to your contact and lead records.
- Create a contact or lead activity report. Add in a count for the number of activities per contact.
- Fulfillment time for each product or service.
- Use projects in Insightly to track your fulfillment.
- Create a report that shows your products and services, the date that a project was started, and the date it was completed.
Extracting the data from Insightly
Remember that the data you get out of any CRM is only as good as the data that you put in. Build your tracking needs into your system and train your team on how to do the best data entry. Once you have the data you need, create the custom reports you will need. Finally, schedule the report to be emailed to you at the intervals you need. Those reports will come to you in Excel format where you can do further editing if needed. If you are serious about great reporting, take a look at Power Bi. It has some built in integration with Insightly and is capable of so much more with some customization. We will have to save my raving accolades of Power Bi for another post.
How to get started with knowing your numbers:
- Ask everyone in your management team to identify the KPI reports that would be most helpful for them.
- Ensure the data pieces you need to calculate those KPIs are being tracked in Insightly or other systems.
- Create custom Insightly reports and schedule them to be emailed you regularly.
Contact us if you need help.