Why SME’s should be collecting data just like the big boys!

You don’t need a degree in data science or a fancy tool to collect data for your business — the reality is that 95% of the data can and should be collected with a manual spreadsheet. If you are serious about growing your business you need to be collecting every point of data that you can get, and not every tool can do that. Spreadsheets are basic but they do the trick.

Let’s take a look at what exactly data is, how you can collect it, and what to do with it once you have it. I promise it won’t be as boring as it sounds, and soon you’ll be seeing the power of data and data opportunities everywhere.

What is data?

Data is anything that can be counted and recorded. It is the secret gold of your business. Collecting data allows you to use it in the future to make predictions, guide decisions on strategy or tactics, and grow your business by improving different areas.

Typical points of data MOST business collect:

• Revenue Received
• Expenses Incurred
• Payroll

But collecting data is so much more than what your accountant wants.

Some examples are:

● The time of day that you talk to someone

● The length of time that you’ve spent on that call

● How many people viewed a post

● How many people have viewed your profile

● How many people opened or read a certain outreach message compared to all the other messages

So, you can see it’s literally everything. It might be a customer’s details; their phone numbers, emails, any details that you can collect. The scope of data is so enormous that it’s very hard to say definitively what it is. You should be collecting and tracking literally everything.

Note: There are privacy laws that must be followed when collecting and storing data.

Whether it’s a restaurant, manufacturing business, or professional services, there are all these points in your processes where you can collect data and use it to find out how to create your desired outcome.

Ask yourself, what is the data inside those processes that if you knew and could affect would have a better, greater outcome in the future?

Why data integrity is important

Numbers can lie really easily. If you ask numbers to say something for you, you can get them to do that. You can manipulate them, you can change them, you could pull a narrative to get you the outcome you want. If you’re having a really bad month in sales or delivery, you can just talk about the numbers that make you look good and sort of gloss over the ones that don’t; you can skew everything to do it. So you need to make sure you get an unbiased view of your data and have a true picture of what you’re trying to see.

You can’t do something 10 times and expect that you know the trend. You need hundreds, thousands of pieces of data to understand it. So make sure you get enough of it and then clean it; remove all the data that could skew the results. You might not have the skills or the ability to do this as a small business, but tough, you’re going to have to learn to do it because you probably can’t afford to pay a data scientist or a data analyst.

Ask the experts — you don’t know what you don’t know

How you use your data in your business comes back to knowing the question to ask. This is a really tough thing to figure out because, for a lot of people, you don’t know what you don’t know. If you don’t know data, how it works, or what it can do for you, you don’t really know the questions to ask.

Sometimes you just need to talk to experts. Anything that you’re trying to figure out, someone has done before, everything is a remix. You’re not creating something new here. So go talk to people about it. If you go up to an expert and ask them for a coffee, they’ll give you a coffee most of the time. So just ask them for some advice, talk to them about it, and figure it out.

Using data to drive your business forward

There are four stages of the life cycle of a business: Marketing, sales, service delivery, client retention. You can collect data at every stage of the lifecycle of business but for this article, we will stick to Sales and Marketing. Are you getting enough people seeing what you do? Are you closing enough business?

Intuitively you will know which areas are working well and which you need to improve. For a lot of companies, there are probably three out of the four that aren’t going well. For small businesses, they’ve usually got great service delivery but they aren’t doing any marketing, they’ve never had to do proper cold sales before, and they don’t have enough time to follow up and nurture clients.

Once you’ve identified your areas to improve, choose one to work on at a time. Identify the question you want to answer and then track all your activities in this area. The data will help you see where you need to improve, and then whether it is working or you need a new direction.

Getting Started: How to collect data and use it to grow your business

Step 1: Map out your processes.

Keep it simple, map out the processes under the four headings: marketing, sales, service delivery, client retention.

Marketing

Marketing is about your brand, it’s not necessarily the lead generation. It’s the branding, it’s making yourself visible.

Sales

Sales is taking that cold audience that’s warmed up a bit, turning them into a lead, and then closing that lead as a sale or deal.

Service Delivery

Service delivery is pretty self-explanatory. It’s doing what you do, and how you do it.

Client Retention

Client retention and client experience is all the fluff. It’s all the stuff that makes your clients love you. It’s being able to turn them into your 1000 TRUE fans. How do you get them to the point where they will never, ever leave?

Step 2: Break down your processes step-by-step

Ideally, you should get to a level of detail that anyone who doesn’t know your business could walk in and start doing that process. Once you start to map it out to that level of detail, you’ll start to see all the things you can track.

Step 3: Data collection — is your software working for you?

Get a spreadsheet, start tracking it, find a way to do the tracking in a way that is easy for the business, there are a lot of tools out there you can use but don’t just start buying tools for the sake of buying tools. Spreadsheets have been sexy since way back.

Check that any software you already use such as Xero or your POS system is tracking what you need. If it isn’t, then get a new one. You shouldn’t be using a POS system unless it’s giving you the reporting and the data that you need to be able to make decisions on.

Tip: Make sure the data collection is easy to do, don’t make it too hard. It has to be to a point where you can’t perform the service without the data getting collected.

Step 4: Data cleaning, integrity & analysis

Get an unbiased view of the data, make sure that the data is clean, and make sure it is answering the questions you have asked.

Step 5: Take action based on your findings.

Use the results and answers that your data has given you to take action. Stop doing the things that don’t work, do more of the things that do work, and don’t be afraid to try new things too. This is the most important step because if you just collect data for the sake of collecting data — it will not help you grow your business.

Remember! Reach out if you have any questions about the possibilities of data or how to use it.

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How are you using data in your business to create positive outcomes?

Stanley Henry

Managing Director | The Attention Seeker