Our management team recently spent a lot of time looking at cash flow in four areas: how our market spending affects leads, sales figures for new clients, sales figures for recurring clients and how our consultants perform during execution of our core services.
The primary question wasn’t around performance; it was about money and it had to do with KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators.
We also analyzed data that looked at time. For example, what was the time span between the moment we delivered a quote to a client to the time when that quote became an order and the client paid? We also looked at how long it took to process and deliver that order.
This information is interesting in itself, but what we do with the information is what really matters. The KPIs enable:
- Budgeting: By understanding the exact cost of customer acquisition, we can determine whether we are spending money on the most appropriate items.
- Training: If one sales rep has a shorter close time, why? Can we ask other team members to do the same thing?
- Processes: Do our internal processes bog down project completion times? Meaning, can we eliminate emails and make a more efficient process to keep everyone informed?
- Staffing: Bottom line numbers show true performance in our sales and service teams. While there are always mitigating circumstances, the numbers show who is pulling their weight and who isn’t.
For years, we’ve had a number of questions about our internal efficiencies, but didn’t have the data to answer those questions. To get the right information, we built a new CRM system. By investing in this data-capable system, we’re able to get the answers to questions we’ve had for years.
What we’ve got to do is focus on the important questions we didn’t know to ask before.
What questions do you need to answer about your business? Do you have the data to find those answers? Our CFO services can help you get in-depth insights into your business processes and the data that can drive your business decisions. Contact us today for help finding answers to the questions that will make a difference for your business.
