The Data-Driven Entrepreneur

I recently dialed into a call with my good friend and Small Business Expert Bill Walsh, who often talks about the importance of analytics. As Bill was sharing tips on what does it take to a launch a successful business, I jotted down several pages of notes.

What jumped out the most to me was the topic, “What are the key drivers to build a business?

Drivers are things that can and should be tracked. That’s basic analytics.

And it started me thinking what it is that makes me effective in my advocacy to help small businesses optimize their use of data. What are the key drivers that go along with the launching, building and growing a business?

Bill often says that “customers are good for business and you have to track success by keeping score”. We all know that you have to track your networking efforts. How many calls did you make today? How many likes or shares did your posts on social media generate? A lot of organizations use applications like Salesforce or Constant Contact to do just this.

But if we don’t have a dedicated tracking system for leads and follow ups, you can easily do something in MS Excel or Google Sheets.

Keeping score means you need to capture data on a scorecard, roll it up into a report and use the data to make business decisions.

You can start with something as simple as this weekly scorecard:

Weekly Customer Contact Scorecard

Track your progress each week by ticking off your success.

Block off one hour a week to spend rolling your data.. Friday afternoons are good for this.

Look at what you are doing well and where you need to spend more or less time.

Take that analysis and put something to action on Monday morning.

This is just one example how an entrepreneur can start to become more data-driven. We need to have ways to capture not just sales data, but data from every aspect of your business.

If you need some help getting started with becoming more data-driven,

I’ m happy to help.