In another article, I shared the importance of setting S.M.A.R.T. goals to reach your agency targets. This week, we’re going to talk about how to measure your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).
Once you have your S.M.A.R.T. goals in place, you need to continually measure your KPIs in order to see what’s working and what’s not, make necessary adjustments, and hold your team accountable for the results you want to create.
What tool do I use?
I suggest using either an Excel spreadsheet or a Shared Google Doc. Your KPIs are motivating to your team, so it’s a great idea to share them. You can have your own KPIs for the overall agency goals too, but sharing goals keeps your staff and you shooting for the same target (i.e. headed in the same direction). I suggest you have On Pace, Off Pace and Danger categories for each KPI and color code them. Green for on/ahead of the goal, yellow for warning (dropping below 10-15% of the goal), and red for danger (dropped 20%+ or more from the goal). Color coding makes it easy to read the shared doc at a glance.
Choose a target
If you’ve already set your S.M.A.R.T. goals, this will be an easy step. What’s the measurable target or targets within each goal? Break the goals down to bite sized goals, such as yearly down to monthly, monthly down to weekly, and weekly down to daily. This may include targets such as a one year goal of hitting 1,000 fans on your Facebook page, which would equal 83 new fans per month. Another target may be 25 new policies signed per salesperson/month, which equals 75 calls per day, write 3 policies per day, or finding 22 new referrals/cross sales/month = 1/day. Think about your overall agency goals and choose smaller targets that will allow you to move forward, while giving you a foundation from which to measure progress.
Set a time period
Once you have your targets in place, decide what the best time period for measuring each goal will be and stick with it. This may be weekly for measuring new followers through your social media marketing efforts, monthly for measuring your results with internet leads per salesperson, daily for measuring new leads by source, or quarterly for measuring larger goals like net agency revenue. Think about what will give you the most insight into each target so you can adjust when needed.
Create your scale of measurement for the KPI
Equally as important as the time period, you need to know what the scale of measurement is. If you spend $500 on Internet leads this month, knowing the number of new leads, signed policies, and total net revenue from new clients is very important. If you buy Auto leads at $14/lead, close 1/10 leads, then you have $140 CPP (Cost Per Policy). What was your total revenue for the policies you wrote? Did your staff get a cross sale of a Home/Renters policy with the Auto? Did they get a referral? All this is measurable and part of your KPIs. These measurements allow you to see whether your time, energy and financial investments are paying off. Not always in revenue alone, but in moving you forward towards your S.M.A.R.T. goals.
Determine what’s working and what’s not
Your KPIs mean nothing if you don’t analyze the measurements you’ve set and take action based on what you discover. At the end of each time period ( I recommend weekly and monthly), take a look at the overall performance with each target. Did the Internet leads you bought last week bring in a good CPP? How about referrals and cross sales? How well did the Internet leads you purchased convert? If buying from more than one source, then you have to also measure by source. Did one salesperson exceed their quota while another barely made a single sale? Really take the time to look at each KPI and determine if things are working or not, and most importantly, why. Be sure to share this data with your staff to help motivate them. You can also use it as a coaching tool since you’ll immediately see those team members that aren’t hitting their goals.
Make the necessary adjustments
Depending on the KPI in question, your action steps will vary. In some instances like advertising, you may consider trying out new ad copy and imagery, or a new target market to see if those factors make a difference. After some time, you may decide it’s not worth the investment. For something like internet leads, you’ll want to adjust per salesperson. Maybe one salesperson is signing more policies because they have a better approach. Maybe another salesperson needs some sales training on how to best work their leads. Maybe, just maybe, the salesperson isn’t fitting the needs of your agency overall and they need to be re-assigned and/or replaced!
Continue to measure
After you’ve made adjustments, continue to measure your KPIs regularly. The only way to truly know and understand what’s working and what’s not is to measure the effects of each adjustment. Did changing the ad copy make a difference in your revenue from social media/advertising this last period? Did moving certain lead types to one salesperson and coaching/training another on skills to work leads better, increase the number of signed policies? Did trying a completely new approach to networking events increase the total leads you came back with?
Work back through these last three steps over and over until you’ve discovered the strategies, people, processes, and campaigns that really work for you. Then keep measuring so that you can continue to improve!
