What gets measured

… gets managed. This saying, proudly quoted by managers everywhere, is true. For employees, it probably means endless reports and documentation and requisitions and paperwork. These things create a measurable paper trail to prove how hard you work and they can come back to help or harm you when you’re being reviewed.

Entrepreneurs should adopt the same focus on measurable numbers, too. It’s easy to spend time helping customers and solving their needs (and when you focus on that, generally profit does follow) but ignoring the numbers can result in higher expenses, lower revenues and, of course, lower profit.

Here’s what I do: I have a bulletin board in my office and I have 3 small pieces of paper tacked onto the board; each paper has a number on it: My customer conversion rate, my rate-per-customer, and my profitability. I strive to improve those numbers carefully and strategically. I have, at other times, posted fourth and fifth numbers for other things I’ve wanted to measure.

So what should you do? Find a few numbers and use them as your measurable weekly or monthly benchmarks. Make sure they are numbers that matter (i.e., don’t monitor how many tweets you make in Twitter when you should be focusing on numbers that have a more dramatic and immediate impact on your business). Measure. Keep track. Focus on those numbers.

Jessica Routier, IAC-EZ

Jessica Routier

Jessica wants to talk to you! She is who coordinates the contests, travels to all the conferences, and interfaces on a fun level with customers on a daily basis in order to bring our users together as a community.

Jessica has a B.Admin and an MBA. Her background in business, along with a diverse skill-set (including a diploma in Medical Transportation, retail experience, and experience as a paralegal) make her a valued, highly flexible team member.

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