KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, are the numbers we use to measure progress and performance. We usually use KPIs to achieve an understanding of whether our business is moving in the direction we planned and hoped for, or not. However, KPIs can also be used in our personal lives.

The Problem With KPIs Today

Most KPIs are generic which simply makes them “bad” because they are not specifically designed for you and your business. Generic KPIs are abstract numbers that, for the most part, have nothing to do with your business. Yet, these numbers have a vast impact on everything you do in your business. Therefore, we often end up getting mislead by them, which means that even when we make progress, we still feel stuck in the same place.

When we choose to promote our brand and our products, whether it is online or by going out into the world, we tend to measure our performance using the same terms everyone else does. This kind of tracking especially takes place on the Internet. You may choose to count subscribers, likes, comments, followers, clicks, or perhaps the number of business cards you collected, hands you shooke, and the number of cars passing by on the highway where you purchased a billboard for the next month. We do all of this because everyone is doing it,  and it feels empty, and that’s why our rate of “conversion” is that lame 1% or 2% at best.

Every business must be unique, it must propose an alternative to the market; otherwise, there is no point for its existence. The market does not need more of what is already available. It seeks an alternative, or simply put: something new and different.

Pursuing life as an entrepreneur takes courage, and so does choosing the right KPIs and being intentional about them. Your KPIs will actually determine the future of your business, so let’s think about what it means to create your own KPIs.

Everybody Wants More Sales

Sales are the lifeblood of any business, so it’s good to start there. Every experienced business owner knows that sales don’t accidentally occur, that there is a process to getting the sale, and it starts with gaining Awareness. Hence, we can establish that every marketing funnel begins with Awareness and ends with a Sale.

(You may choose to say that a funnel ends with obtaining referrals, but that’s not the point of this article, and the truth is that referrals are simply another way of gaining Awareness.)

Each step that takes place in your funnel between Sales and Awareness makes your funnel unique (some may even claim that it’s your business), and that’s where we usually tend to get mislead because we fill it up with generic KPIs.

You will find that every factor that leads someone to buy your product specifically from your brand is nothing generic at all. It’s a series of personal, meaningful interactions, and if you make the mistake of placing generic labels as your KPIs (i.e., subscribers, followers, likes, etc…), then you will miss out on many opportunities, as you won’t see what’s actually taking place in your funnel and resulting in increased sales.

Here Is How To Fix It

I’m not saying that more subscribers won’t lead to more sales. Rather, I’m proposing that what made someone subscribe in the first place was unique to your brand, there was a reason why someone chose you over another, and you want to find out, or make an assertion about, what that reason is.

For example, at iQSAY, we found that by providing someone with an answer to a problem he/she has – which may take us less than 5 minutes, – we can dramatically accelerate how fast we can turn that prospect into a paying client. Therefore, we don’t simply seek to meet as many people as we can. Instead, we changed our focus to setting out to answer, to provide simple solutions to, problems as often as we can to whoever needs assistance within the scope of our products. So you guessed it: our KPI is how many problems we solved for prospects, or more specifically, how many questions we answered each week.

We chose to personalize the KPIs we use in our business, as well as to make them personal for our existing and future clients, and I invite you to do the same.

In almost anything in life, you will find that there are underlying actions that propel everything else. And as entrepreneurs, we must assert, identify and double down on them.

Feel free to reach out to us for help.

Personalize your KPIs and start doing so today. You will discover that it won’t just affect your business’ bottom line; it will change your business, too.