Bill Koeblitz doesn’t have problems communicating direction. He uses metrics.
“It’s helped us by being very clear on what it is we’re trying to get done,” says the co-owner, president and CEO of MobilityWorks, a provider of handicap vehicles. “It allows us to predict and plan with a lot of accuracy because each person is stating what they’re going to do and then doing it.”
When determining measurements, start by looking at internal and outside information. That’s where Koeblitz started with MobilityWorks, which had 2008 revenue of $66.1 million.
Smart Business spoke with Koeblitz about how to set metrics.
Q. How do you determine what metrics to use?
You have to start with some very high-level strategic goals based on demographics that your needs are serving. Then you’ve got to look at the reality of the people that are performing and create all of the metrics in between and start optimizing on everything.
It starts with trying to get an overall market assessment.
So there are 2 million people in wheelchairs. You say, ‘How many do I think would wind up having a need for our product?’ and starting at 50,000 feet doing that.
Then at the grassroots level saying, ‘What have we done in the last year in this market we’re in of Akron?’ and looking at the number of sales per capita and understanding that.
Then talking to 20 people that are in my industry and asking them the same thing, searching out who has the best practices, who’s doing it the best way.
Absolutely talk with other people in your industry and talk with data in front of you as opposed to just talking. If somebody says, ‘Hey, this marketing program really works,’ it’s nice but show me what it costs, show me that you actually got a response from it, show me the info that shows that.
You do that within your industry. Then absolutely do that outside of your industry also because a lot of the same principles apply.
You get new ideas from each resource. Within the industry you’ll get some good ideas about what you can do that’s relevant to your industry, a new way to market, a new way to manage your people, cost savings.
If you go outside the industry, you’ll find business concepts that might work better. We’re in the retail space, so talking to other retailers about what they do to market to their customers and to create customer satisfaction.