#8

Hidden Metrics That Matter

How hidden data inside your business offers a huge competitive advantage, if you can extract it.

You’re a professional business person and leader. You take the running of your enterprise very seriously and you’re good at it. You put in some serious time. Many days working from 6:00 AM till 6 or 7:00 PM in an effort to move the business to the next level, and stay ahead of the competition. 

Most importantly, you take pride in your ability to work with and understand the numbers that represent your business. I’m talking about the metrics and KPIs generated by your Point Of Sale System and accounting systems. So, you’re on top of your KPI’s and business metrics and you study your P&L weekly. 

As a result, most would characterize you as a very competent and effective business person and a real numbers person. 

So it may surprise or even shock you when I make the following claim, “You’re missing a ton of mission critical data inside your company, because it’s been hidden from sight forever.”  

You’re not alone! 

In 1998, I was part of a team that purchased a chain of 104 auto repair and tire stores from BP, it was called Procare. We had a great POS system which rolled up into our server every day and we had all the metrics and KPI’s and a monthly P&L. We had everything, at least that’s what we thought at the time, but we were wrong. We were missing the most important data of all, which had to do with language. 

That’s right! We had no KPI data or reports regarding the conversations taking place inside our company. And it soon became apparent to me that this missing data was way more important than we realized. Why you may ask? Because every number in our traditional KPI reports and on our P&L was produced by the communication taking place inside our company. And we had no way to assess it and there was no data about it, anywhere. We had no way to wrap our hands around the language piece of the business, which literally WAS THE BUSINESS. Despite all the data we did have, it was only a fraction of what was available and what was needed. This language data I’m referring to was there in front of us, but we couldn’t extract it at the time, it was literally HIDDEN from view. It was concealed inside millions of random business conversations. Like a big jigsaw puzzle that you dump out on the dining room table with the kids, our business was simply a jumbled mess of millions of conversations. Your business is your own jigsaw puzzle. You’ve got thousands of if not millions of conversations, THAT’S YOUR BUSINESS and I’m willing to bet that you can’t make sense of all the conversations. Don’t feel badly, most can’t!  

Reflect on this for a moment. Every number appearing on your existing P&L and all your KPI reports is generated by people communicating, yet you have no way to report on and make sense of it all. 

I was lucky because I had begun studying language and communication in 1980 and so I was looking at the business like the linguistic operation it was, only we had no way, at the time, to measure ANY OF IT. 

Here’s why it’s mission critical for business people to really understand this. 

You have a well thought out vision for your business, you know, all the goals and objectives for the future. This vision takes shape typically as your 1 year, 3 year and 5 year plans. We all plan like this, right! So here’s the challenge I faced back then and you’ll face as the day unfolds. The ONLY way you will achieve your vision is through your team, and how they communicate among themselves and with customers. It’s the communication that produces absolutely everything. If your team isn’t aligned and doesn’t know how to communicate about your YOUR VISION for the future… you’re not going to get the future you planned. You’ll get some other future, but certainly not the one in your vision document. 

Because of this challenge, I’ve spent the last 25 years of my life hyper focused on devising a solution for business people, so you CAN have access to the language data and so you CAN steer your business with confidence, into the future with total alignment among your team. During that time period I’ve developed three software platforms in an attempt to solve the riddle. 

Our latest software platform, SALESMAXPLUS (SMP), accomplishes the task in a very powerful way. Using a combination of Artificial Intelligence, speech analytics, keyword spotting along with human oversight, we are able to assess and report on many thousands of conversations in real time. We measure and report on the effectiveness of the communication taking place in the company. Armed with the New Data, we are able to teach, train, coach and create alignment among large teams of people, like never before. 

Clients using SALESMAXPLUS data are finally able to gaze toward the future with their hands firmly of the steering wheel. Armed with the new SMP data, it feels like you finally have control of the business at a new level and the stress begins to dissipate as results blossom. 

Sounds too good to be true! Danny Smith from Tulsa embraced the process 6 ½ years ago when he was doing $4.8 million in his 5 location brick and mortar business. He’ll reach the $20 million level over the next year. Chris Burr, GM of an 8 location brick and mortar company went from $14 million to $30 million over the past 6 years using the same approach. Max Gardner took his $4.9 million 5 location operation to nearly $12 million in only 4 years. 

All of them have succeeded by turning their attention to the language metrics, the METRICS THAT REALLY MATTER.