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Session Recap: Metrics That Matter

To better understand how their businesses could improve, eager ESX attendees found advice on measuring metrics for websites, finances, technicians and sales teams.



Presenters:

  • Chris Neumann, President, Security ONE Alarm Systems

  • Patrick Ritter, Chief Financial Officer, ADS Security

  • Brent Uhl, Chief Operating Officer, CPI Security



ESX attendees took the first step to their companies’ improvement on June 21 in Nashville with this session on measuring the right metrics.

To better understand how their businesses could improve, these eager learners found advice on measuring metrics for websites, finances, technicians and sales teams. Presenters also shared software and processes for making sense of the gathered data, and steps to take based on the reports.

Brent Uhl, COO of CPI Security, started the session by demystifying web metrics. Through standard metrics such as number of visitors, page rankings on search engines and unique vs repeat visitors, his team can gauge how well marketing efforts are performing in each channel. His company tracks these metrics and more, with the overall goal being to drive conversions and website response rates.

“We measure website response rates two ways: how many calls are we getting off the web from unique phone numbers on the website, and how many web submits are we getting,” Uhl said.

Evaluating the website against these goals helps narrow his KPIs, which include pageviews, time spent on site and web lead response time. Response time is important because the sales team picks up where the website leaves off, moving customers along the funnel and forming a relationship.

“When we do get web submits, how quickly are we calling them? At the longest, we want it to be five minutes during open business hours,” Uhl said.

The next step is to track conversion rates, which Uhl said his company breaks down by sales rep. Also worth tracking are install rates, closing ratios and the time from sales to installation.

One sales KPI that the group stressed the importance of is review scores. In a time when customers are just as likely to search for reviews of a service as they are to ask a friend, the importance of customer reviews of your company cannot be overstated.

Not only do the scores matter, but the number of reviews is also important. Therefore it is wise to have a plan in place to encourage customers to leave honest reviews after their experience with a company’s sales team or technician.

“What we’ve found is working best for us to generate reviews is to incentivize the customer to leave one,” said Chris Neumann, President of Security ONE Alarm Systems.

Neumann said his company offers a free key fob with an installation if a customer leaves reviews in multiple places online, or gives them half price for the add-on if they only leave one review.

The timing for sending out reviews is another decision that warrants consideration. To isolate reviews for sales teams from those for technicians, Neumann said his company sends an invitation to review the sales team right after the sale is closed. The company then sends another invitation to review the installation process after the job is completed.

Another presenter said his company prefers to send the invitation to review the sales team and technicians all at once, citing customer frustration at completing a review before the job is finished as a reason they wait.

Review scores can be tracked for each sales rep to measure individual performance. This process can be achieved manually or with a service such as Podium, according to presenters.

Another way to track sales performance is ensuring they are using processes and being organized, according to Neumann.

“We believe that if you’re an organized salesperson and you’re planning your day properly, you’re also going to be more successful,” he said. “So, what we do is look at the calendar daily. There’s an inside sales person who tracks [the sales team’s input to the funnel and calendar] and fills out a scorecard. At the end of the month they can earn [a bonus]. At the same time there is a negative side [for] if they’re not organized and not using the funnel. So far it’s working well – we’re seeing an uptick in organization and seeing better results.”

The conversation continued into financial metrics, with a strong focus on defining and tracking value creation.

“At the end of the day what really matters is value creation. I want to know value – what is the value of this asset in my portfolio?” said Patrick Ritter, CFO of ADS Security. “[This metric is] essentially profit, whether it’s at the job level or total earnings for the company. It’s profit plus the value of the recurring revenue that has grown in a chosen measuring period.”

Ritter emphasized the importance of segmenting the value creation metrics for different channels, and even within the channels, to better understand where the value is coming from.
“A lot of people will get a little bit of tunnel vision because they’ll say ‘well, my overall creation multiple or my overall value creation is blank.’ But do they really understand the components of that?” Ritter said. “You’re fooling yourself if you don’t break out those components to truly understand the cost. And maybe there’s some of that business that’s just not worth doing.”

Another metric crucial to internal effectiveness is same day or next day service completion.

“That’s a very important one to us. On average a customer only needs you one or two times a year, right? But when they need you, they need you,” Ritter said.

This metric measures what percentage of service calls are resolved within 48 hours, taking into account the fact that sometimes the customer might not want a response right away (e.g., their beach house needs service in preparation for vacation later that year). Ritter said his team aims to be in the 75-80% range of same or next day completions.

The session ended with questions for the presenters and a few enriching viewpoints from attendees sharing best practices and tools of the trade.

After learning which KPIs to measure for technicians, sales teams, websites and finances, as well as how to apply the insights gained from the data, attendees to this session left more prepared to improve their businesses using the metrics that matter.