Making Love and Business Work: Don't Be a Box Checking Entrepreneur

This is the Momentum podcast. One of the most important pieces of advice that I give entrepreneurs who are growing and scaling a company is don't ever collect a metric you don't intend to use and you really need to look at the metrics, the KPIs, the information you're getting from your business as a way to make decisions, and far too many don't. I'm excited because on this podcast, we have Cadey joining us again.

Hi, everybody, excited to be here

because Cadey and I were recently in a mastermind where we were all coaching an entrepreneur and there the entrepreneur that was being coached had a very typical problem for entrepreneurs and exhibit a a typical challenge and entrepreneurs have. So I'll just give you a high level what was going on in the room we were meeting with a business owner, had a really successful business, incredible talent. Talented entrepreneurs are doing so many of the right things. And unfortunately, in the previous six months from us sitting down together and their sales conversion rates had gone from mid 30 percent, which is healthy for a phone. That sales organization like this one was two down to 30 then to 25 then to 20. And I think when we were meeting with them somewhere between 15 and 18 percent and Cadey, I remember you got a little emotional at that point and started asking some questions.

Well, I think everybody was going in the room and we were trying to help kind of solve the problem. And what I was hearing was that there is an issue in the sales department and really nobody had drilled down on that. So when came when it came to me, I said, You know, hey, what you're telling me is that you're meeting every week on KPIs and that you're seeing that there's this drop from like thirty five percent down to, I think it was like 14 or 15 percent. And you're not drilling in on that data. And so I think a lot of entrepreneurs will get in the habit and they're like, Oh, I'm a good entrepreneur. I'm checking the box, I'm collecting my KPIs. But collecting KPIs or performance metrics are a tool. They're there to give you data. It's just like getting your labs drawn with your doctor. You're you're there for the data so you can respond to the data. You know, knowing that you have high blood pressure and they're not doing anything about it, it's challenging for your health. Knowing that your sales numbers are dropping and not going and digging in and do something about it to see, you know what? The challenges is a problem for your business. And so KPIs, art and performance metrics are, you know, it's not the exercise of just collecting the data so that you can say, like, I'm doing the right thing as an entrepreneur, it's using them as a tool so that you can respond to them so that you can, you know, change your behavior based on what the data is telling you.

I'm Alex Charfen, and this is the Momentum podcast made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazers, shot takers, record breakers, world makers and creators of all kinds, those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution. Sure, we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny. We define it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop and we don't know how. While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority. The few who are willing to hallucinate there could be a better future. And instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real. We are the evolutionary hunters, clearly the most important people in the world because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution and we always will be. So when we were in this room, you know, Cadey started asking questions like, have you talked to the sales team? Have you? Have you talked to the sales manager? Have you looked at what he's doing? Have you looked at the numbers within the sales team? Have you talked to individual sales reps? Are you listening to any of the sales calls? You know, you have a crisis here. Is anyone listening to those sales calls and they're asking those questions? Cadey found out that, you know, no one had really talked to the sales manager and they had just looked at the numbers. They weren't recording their sales calls. And we live in Texas, where a single party recording is 100 percent legal, so they should have been and that there really wasn't any investigation off of the KPIs. And so when you look at metrics or KPIs, I like to use metrics because key performance indicators is a term that's all over everywhere, and I really like metrics. To me, a metric is a number that shows you whether it's success or failure in key performance indicators. The same thing. But I like to use metrics because we also use milestones as a way to measure what somebody is doing. Which metrics are the numbers? Milestones are what they're getting done. So I think, you know, there's three points here that we want to share is one you don't want to be a box checking out, but entrepreneur and we'll explain in just a second. Second, KPIs are a tool that you can respond that you use to and you need to respond to them. It's not just looking at them, that is the outcome. And then third, this is a big one. Collecting APIs without acting on them is dangerous. So let's start by Cadey. What do you what do we mean by don't be a box checking entrepreneur?

I think that we all go to masterminds or we read a book and we get this idea and it's like, Oh, I'm going to, I'm going to, you know, do my ESOPs or I'm going to collect my KPIs or collect my performance metrics. And it's like the act of the doing. The activity is the goal. But the challenge is that we don't like respond to that activity. If you have a bunch of SOPs that nobody in your team follows, then you know you're doing an exercise that's not providing any value or any process and efficiency in the in the business. If you're collecting performance metrics and you're not using them as a tool to respond to and change the behavior in the business, then you're just checking the box that it got done. You're not actually utilizing the tool to the fullest of its capabilities. Yeah.

And then, you know, secondly, Cadey, as are the tools that you can respond to them and respond to the data they provide. So for example, if your sales conversions are dropping, you know, typically knowing what I know about having coached a ton of entrepreneurs with a ton of businesses and looked at a lot of sales teams when conversions go down, typically it's because the process has been released, the scripts no longer being used. The sales reps are getting overconfident. They're telling too many personal stories that they're relating rather than consulting with the person who's on the phone with them. And that will make your sales drop like a rock. However, if you're collecting KPIs and you're not listening to the calls and making sure the scripts are being followed, making sure the foundation of the sales team is there, then what you're really doing is making yourself feel like you're doing something like, Cadey said. It feels like you're being successful, you're checking the box. I collected KPIs, but the next step is really crucial and then Cadey. The last point that we definitely want to make is that collecting KPIs without acting on them is actually dangerous. Why is that?

Because you're not creating efficiencies in the business, you're not doing that, you're not responding to the KPIs in a way that are going to provide value to the business. And even like if it can also be on the flip side, so like maybe in marketing, something really responded well and you collected these metrics that are showing that you're performing really well in an area. If you don't go and dig in on that, then you don't have something that you can repeat. So, you know, whether they're, you know, the performance indicator is saying or the metric is saying, Hey, we had a drop here or we had an increase in sales, you can say you can go and say, OK, we got a positive response. What was the activity that we did so that we can repeat that over and over and over again to grow our to grow our sales, to grow our revenue? And so when you're not responding to the KPI, you're not using them to the fullest of the capabilities that and the reason why you're collecting the data in the first place.

And so there's four edges to a delegation when we as entrepreneurs delegate what we're doing to something we a lot of people just think about people, but we actually see four exits to indicate delegation. You delegate to a person who's going to do the thing for you, to a project that's going to get the thing done for you, to a process where you fully document what you're doing. So you don't have to do any more. It's delegated to a process or a policy where if somebody is asking the same question over and over again or you get the same question over and over again, you make it a policy. Or if there's something you want to stay in place long term, you make it a policy. Most delegations are a combination of these four, and sometimes it's all for you have a project that creates a new process where you have a person that gets trained on that process and then you create a policy that says, we will always use this thing to get this done. And so you can use that same 4P framework when you're looking at issues with metrics, you can ask, is there a problem with the person who's getting this thing done? And so if it's a sales team, it's unlikely it's a person. It might be the sales manager, which we feel like it wasn't the case in the room that we were in. Second, you might ask has is the process still be involved? Has the process broken? Has the process changed? Is there something wrong with the process? Third, you can ask, is it? Is it has a project gone off the rails? Have we done something that is affected, the success of the metrics we were previously getting? So in the case with the sales team? Did we have a project that derailed the same sales team? Did we change something somewhere else in the company? This change that's affecting the sales team? And then the last one is policy. Is there a policy? It's not being followed here. Like one of the policies we have in our company is we have a sales script and you follow the sales script 100 percent of the time and you stay away from too many personal anecdotes because it takes it out of a business conversation and makes it a let's get to know each other conversation, and we really want to consult with people and give them the outcome. And so and when I look at our sales department, we had a project to switch over our sales department from commissioned and noncommissioned. We had a policy that we are always going to use the same script and the same sales process. We documented the sales process. We documented the script so that it could be followed, and then we made sure that we had the right people in place that are willing to follow those things. And so for you, if you ever have a number that's confusing, you dig in and ask questions and maybe even look at that 4P framework and ask yourself just as a way of kind of investigating, is there a person who's gone off the rails? Is there a process is not being followed? Is there a policy that needs to be updated or even put in place? Or is there a project needed here so that we can fix this? So if you're collecting numbers, if you're looking at measurement, make sure you're reacting to them in some way or it's just the act of measuring and it doesn't really make any difference. So what ended up happening in that story? We started in the beginning,

he ended up digging into, you know, what was going on with his with his sales team and he had, you know, a culture of entitlement going on in the sales department that was being led by the sales manager. So. And I think that they the the Commission Patrick package was very commission rich. And so, you know, young sales team that was making a lot of money. And so they were coming in and they were fat and happy and unmotivated. And so you had to make some changes. And I think, you know, he he made the decision to do that and it served him well.

Yeah, and it's already started to turn around the numbers. Are they actually let go of the sales manager who for months had been blaming the issue on everything but not following the process and not managing the people, not enforcing the policies? And when they moved him out, he actually said he had seen it coming for a number of days. And so, you know, I've known for months this was going to happen. And so when you hear that, you know, you've made the absolute right decision and it's time to move forward and stay in momentum. And so if you are? Managing a company don't just follow the metrics, react to them and use them to make decisions, and you will see your company grow like crazy. And if you're ready to take your company to the next level and you want to understand the right frameworks and process and structure in order to grow your business, predictably, take a minute now and go to Simple Operations WSJ.com. Answer a few questions for our team and we'll jump on a call with you to show you how we can help you consistently scale your seven figure business to where you hit eight figures. And if you're so inclined, you can go even beyond that. We hope entrepreneurs do this all the time, but one of the few organizations out there that has a roster of seven figure businesses that have had eight figure and multiple eight year numbers. And we'd love to be able to talk to you. Simple operations dot com.