Lead Measures
Tracking your marketing and closing effort is key to getting accurate forward predictions. Without testing and measuring your effort, you are really only relying on post-sales reports to predict what may happen next quarter. Don’t leave it to chance, define what measures you are doing to influence the work coming in.
Lag Measures
Cash flow and profit should be monitored no less than weekly to highlight changes and variance to plan. Known as lag measures, these are the end results of your marketing and sales effort. Just because you aren’t in profit doesn’t mean it is because your sales are lacking. Your pricing and costs of goods may be out of unison with your sales and service. This is a good way to test your business health and any changes you can make with pricing to affect the bottom line in a healthier way.
On-time reporting
We advocate using a CRM to have live reporting into a visible, easy-to-use interface. Our favourite is Hubspot, but essentially all CRM’s can provide the level of tracking and reporting you require.
In fact, there is so much customisation available within a CRM you are flat out even scratching the surface of what they can do. Our tip is to focus on what is really important and build reports around this – and have them molded into a dashboard that you look at each day.
You can read our eBook on what we consider the four disciplines of digital execution to get a handle on what reporting can do for your business here.