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What Gets Measured Gets Improved
“What gets measured gets managed.” Robert Sharma said, “What gets measured gets improved.” What do these quotes mean?
You can’t get better if you don’t know what areas you need to improve. For example, let’s say your goal is to sell more houses. How many calls do you need to make in order to set an appointment? How many appointments do you need to set to actually have an appointment? How many appointments do you need to have in order to get a listing? How many listings do you need to get in order to have a closing?
If you aren’t tracking those numbers, if you aren’t measuring, you don’t really know what you need to do to have more closings. Have more closings or sell a lot of homes isn’t a goal. But if you measure, you realistically know what you need to do to have 75 closings.
Now, let’s say you discover from measuring, that you make 30 calls to get 1 appointment. This shows you that you can improve your conversion ratio at getting appointments. So now you have an activity, lead generation, that you can improve upon. You begin to work on your scripts and dialogues and as a result, you now see that for every 30 calls you set 15 appointments. Since you measured, you saw an area you could improve upon.
The fact that you’re still in business doesn’t necessarily mean what you’re doing is working. What if you’re still in business because the market is great and business is everywhere? What happens if the market shifts and you now really need to rely on your skill sets? You better hope you’ve improved.
“What gets measured, gets managed.” – Peter Drucker
There is so much power in this quote. If you’ve never tracked yourself, you don’t even know how much power there is in tracking. I couldn’t even explain it adequately. You wouldn’t believe me. You’d think I was exaggerating. The simple act of paying attention to something will cause you to make connections you never did before, and you’ll improve the those areas – almost without any extra effort.
Here’s the flip side to measuring. Not everything needs to be managed. What gets measured matters. Make sure you are measuring activities that drive results. Don’t simply measure everything, measure the most important things like prospecting to appointments, appointments to clients, clients to closed business, etc . . .
Don’t let this become overwhelming. Start simple. Begin with your goals. Everyday, set your smaller goals. These become gauges to indicate if you’re on track or not to hit your bigger goals. Review daily, weekly, and monthly. The key to improving is to make sure you are course correcting. If you see gaps in certain activities, ask yourself, how could I improve these numbers? I could I improve in this area of my business? Who could help me improve in this area?
I have also found that hiring a coach can help you not only identify what to measure, but a coach can help you identify areas to improve upon and give you a strategy to do just that.