The A/V installer market is just like most others in that we get kind of stuck tracking the same old key performance indicators (KPIs) such as revenue and revenue growth.
“Financials are great – they’re how you stay in business – but what are some other metrics that drive money?” asked presenter Brad Malone of Navigate, a management consulting firm focused on the technology integrator (CEDIA and Infocomm) channels.
Malone spoke to a group of about 26 of the largest specialty A/V resellers in the U.S., part of ProSource’s “PRO” group of dealers.
Here are a few of the metrics some of them track:
- Returns and exchanges by customer, so you know “when it’s time to fire customers”
- Yelp reviews, especially in monitoring what the Millennials are talking about
- Customer satisfaction scores (cross-referenced with the employees who served the customers)
- Human resource performance – attrition rate, tardiness, etc.
- Customer leads and close rates – “the two of those together really affects sales”
- “Mindshare” among employees – are you selling too many products and services that none can really grab enough mindshare among salespeople?
- Net promotor score, i.e., the willingness of customers to promote your business (via customer surveys)
Of course, the data does no good if it’s not acted upon, Malone stresses. “Just measuring isn’t good enough. What action am I taking because of the data? … Is it cascaded all the way down [within the organization], with someone assigned to monitor, manage, describe and display” the data?
One thing he suggested was monitoring the number of “special” employees or tasks that don’t have core roles in the critical parts of the company.
For example, if you’re finding yourself using a bunch of “runners,” think about using Uber instead.
A dealer asked Malone if the KPI rules “change” with Millennials in the mix.
“They think different,” he says. “Let them come up with their own metrics if you’re going to grow the next generation of employees. Ask them how their metric drivers revenue.”
If they don’t have a good answer, “OK, go come up with better metrics. Built a system they can win at.”
In all of this, Malone can’t stress enough: “Keep score. You wouldn’t go to a sporting event without a scoreboard. People want to win.”
