8 - A case for metrics for coaches

Welcome to the business of executive coaching. I'm Ellie Scarfe, an ex lawyer turned executive coach. Over the last 17 years I've coached in house, I've been an associate coach and I've run executive coaching businesses with teams of coaches around the world. My clients have ranged from global brand names to boutiques, startups and organizations doing good in the world. I now run the Impact Coach Collective, a community of executive coaches who want to level up their business skills and take action in a community of like minded peers. I'm a traveller, a reader, a mum, wife and dog parent and I know firsthand that our stories have a huge impact on our businesses. The executive coaching business is tough and I've learnt all the lessons through plenty of mistakes and also with some great mentors. This podcast is all about growing a thriving executive coaching business. You can build a coaching business that is profitable, sustainable and that supports your personal goals, whatever they are. I'll be sharing tips and ideas translated for your context as well as stories from the field with brilliant coaches and mentors. If you want to level up your executive coaching business skills, then this is the place for you. Hello and welcome to the business of executive coaching. So today I want to put forward to you a case for using metrics in your coaching business. Now, it might be a short podcast. No, just kidding. Or actually it will be, hopefully a shorter episode because I can get to the point when it comes to metrics and that's why metrics are important. But I want to start with a confession because I sort of, I feel, I don't feel clean about metrics in terms of walking the talk because to be honest, tracking metrics is not my strength and has never been one of my strengths. I have a tendency to bury my head in the sand when I think that the metrics are going to tell me something that I'm not proud of or something that is a problem I know, but I don't want to face. But I know that the numbers that I most want to avoid are the ones that I need to know whether it is the number of sales engagements that, that I've had or whether it's profit or revenue. When I feel a sense of avoidance. That's some excellent data that this is a metric that I need to be conscious of and I need to get into more deeply. Now, I know that I'm not on my own because people generally don't love metrics. Some do, but most coaches that I talk to about metrics don't say yay. I've been waiting Until I could, I could really, you know, set up my metrics and track those. In fact, that's never happened to me. Although we do have the odd accountant, you'll know if I'm talking about you, who doesn't mind a bit of metric management. So God love you, please teach me your secrets. I don't love it. And I was probably like a lot of other coaches in that we come out of the corporate world where we are measured up to our eyeballs. I was a lawyer and what the measurements were in my world were our time was tracked by the six minute block. So some of you may be in a similar position. And on top of the measurement of our time, we were measured very heavily on which parts of our time were build out. And so we had to make sure that our time was recorded accurately and, and then we had to go through the bills and make sure that they were accurate and then write off time if it was irrelevant. So, so I remember leaving that role thinking I never want to measure anything. I want to go into a role where I can connect with people, where I can be very heart oriented, where I know that what's meaningful is not the numbers. And that is true. And I think a lot of people like me are a bit worn out, are a bit repelled by the idea of metrics because we often didn't see the outcome of the metrics in the corporate world. We saw the inputs and we saw that they took away from the time to do what we considered to be a real job. But we didn't necessarily get the insights from the data. We didn't get to see the conclusions from keeping that information. So that's one of the reasons some people don't love it. And the other thing I often see, and I, you know, I, I sort of see this in myself, is that we may have grown up with some stories about who we are and what we're good at. And so one of them might be that we're big picture people, not good at attention to detail. And I sort of put myself in that camp. Or we might have grown up with stories about how we were bad at maths and we sort of extrapolated that to mean things like metrics and measurements. And I see that a lot. I see it not just in coaches, I see it in coaches as well that we have some of those stories, usually from school days, about being bad at spreadsheets or bad at maths and they tend to be expressed in a really absolute way that this is just a fact. And of course we know that it is not a fact. It's generally a feeling, and it's generally a case of a story that was told to us that we internalized. So whatever your experience with metrics were, in your business, you need to track your metrics, and it's really important that you do. But why, you may ask? Well, the first thing is, I'm sure anyone with corporate experience will have heard this saying, what gets measured gets managed. And it is totally right. If we are measuring something, then we are going to put effort, sometimes even unconsciously, into doing things that make those metrics look better and reflect better on us. And the way it does that is that when we're measuring something, it sharpens our focus, right? And it puts our attention on something that may otherwise have been unconscious. So suddenly we are focused, our attention is on it. And just that fact alone is likely to lead to a more positive result. There's an interesting phenomenon that actually asking a question itself causes an outcome without doing anything else. And I think that's the case in metrics. An interesting example of this in a totally different context is research into weight loss that shows that weighing yourself every day is associated with a higher level of weight loss. Now, I am not about diet culture, so this is an example. I don't want anyone to be weighing themselves every day. But the message is clear. If we track something on a regular basis, every day is the best. Obviously, then it will become associated with an improvement in that metric itself. So if you were to track your revenue every day, or you were to measure your marketing activities every day, I would expect to see a positive outcome just as a result. Sorry, just as a result of tracking that very metric. The other reason we should measure metrics is that it allows us to look at data over time and allows us to see progress or lack thereof, and allows us to see trends. And this then informs our strategy, and it allows us to make informed decisions about taking action. So, for example, if we notice after, you know, six months of tracking our data that we have one offering, whether it's a coaching offering or a facilitation offer that is providing 80% of our revenue, then we get to make a decision. And the decision may be that we're just going to focus on this one offer, so the 20% providing 80% of the outcomes. Or it might allow us to say, wow, I really got into this because I wanted to be doing coaching 80% of the time, so what would I need to do in order to do that? But either way, we have education, the Other thing it allows us to do is notice What? Well, my 90 day plus debtors, so that's people who haven't paid their bills within 90 days of them becoming overdue. I'm getting more and more of those every quarter or every month. And so that can tell you that you need to have a better policy around following up on invoices, or perhaps you need an upfront billing policy. But either way, longitudinal measurement allows us to make these educated decisions. And also, you know, I think we should also do it because there is a reason that the best and, and the worst companies in the world are measuring metrics. So even though we veer away from it because we, we are a bit over it, we need to remember to take what was good about the corporate world and leave what wasn't. So measuring what is, you know, real and impactful to your business is, is important. And we need to make sure that we, we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to, you know, stepping away from our corporate worlds. There are a number of, you know, bewares or things to watch out for when it comes to measuring your metrics. And the first one is that we should avoid measuring vanity metrics alone. What is a vanity metric, you may ask? A vanity metric is something that looks good, important and significant and we can spend a lot of time working on it, but at the end of the day, it doesn't actually make a difference. So an example of a vanity metric might be the number of followers that you have on social media. So, you know, just because someone has followed you on LinkedIn or on Facebook doesn't mean that they are likely to become a client. Right. Unless you have been very deliberate about how you get those followers. So we need to ask, is this thing I'm measuring a vanity metric or is it a lead indicator? Right, So a lead indicator is something that is a sign that another outcome is likely to take place. So a lead indicator may be something like the number of people who sign up for your email newsletter, because people who take a positive step towards engaging with you, you are more likely later on down the track to convert into clients. So measuring lead indicators is good, but beware of vanity metrics. The next thing is that another good example of a vanity metric is revenue. Right? So you may say to me, what are you talking about? Revenue is one of the most important things in my business. And you're right, but it's revenue plus. So actually a good saying that I heard from Tina Tower, who is a business mentor of mine is that revenue is for vanity, profit is for sanity, and cash flow is reality. So when we're measuring, it's good to measure revenue, but it's more important to measure profit. And it's even more important to be tracking our cash flow projections, if we can. So those are, those are some things to watch out for. The other thing I would say is that it can be tempting to only track our metrics when we feel motivated to do it, which is generally only when we think we're going to get a good outcome. So it's really important that we do it on a predictable, regular basis to make our approach to the metrics less emotional and take the sting out of it if there is a negative metric. So we will need to remember that the metric itself is value neutral. Right? It's not good, it's not bad. All it is is information for us to use when we make our decisions. So what metrics should you consider? Now? I have a detailed list and worksheet in the Corporate to Coach Blueprint workbook for people who, who joined that program. If you want to take a Look, it's at elliscarf.com C2C. But the sorts of things you might look at include financial metrics, revenue, profit, debtors, you know, invoicing in number of, number of invoices sent. You could track things like that. You might track your sales pipeline data. So things like leads that you have engaged with, sales calls you've completed, proposals you've sent, you know, engagements that you've received. You may look at delivery metrics as well. So how many coaching sessions have you had? How many facilitated sessions have you had? So which of your offers have you delivered? You may track feedback from any engagements that you've had. You may track your social media metrics, and you absolutely should. But you might want to look beyond just followers into things like engagement. So how many people are liking or commenting or sending you messages about things, because those are indicators that are more likely to lead to a sales process. Obviously there are a lot more, so more information if you want to look in the corporate to coach blueprint. Now, how should you capture your metrics? The first thing is to know what you're going to measure. Get a spreadsheet. That's the simplest way to do it. There are plenty of tools that can do it as well. But I would say start with a spreadsheet and make sure that you're clear on what you're going to capture, what items of data, and that you know how to get all the data that you need. Now that sounds like you might be like, oh, well, that's obvious. We need to know how to get that data. But if you suddenly sit down and you realize that you don't know how to use your accounting system properly to get a profit and loss statement, or you didn't realize that you need to to needed to have fully, you know, entered all your data into your, your financial system before you can get an accurate P and L statement, you need to make sure that that is all in place. Then you need to know when you are going to do your metric gathering, your metric measurement. So for me, I do it on the first business day after the last day of the month because when I feel fresh, I feel like I'm, I'm super keen to see how we went in the last month. And so I like to do it quickly. But equally, you could do it, you know, the first Friday after the end of the month or whichever, whichever you prefer. But put it in your diary, make it consistent and give yourself enough time to do it properly. It will get quicker and easier as well the more you do it. Okay, so if you are going to do just one thing having listened to this podcast, what I would say is go now, save a spreadsheet and identify five top metrics that you will measure. The reason I say do it immediately is it's really good to set a baseline. So if nothing else, you can look back at it in six to 12 months and it will be amazing to see how far you've come. In more likelihood, you will review it regularly. So at least every month. And what you have is some really useful data that can help you to make decisions, help to inform your strategy, and help you to troubleshoot when things aren't going so well. So thanks for listening. I hope that you are now just as much a fan of metrics as I am, and I look forward to talking to you next week. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Business of Executive Coaching. If you found it helpful, please share it with a colleague or friend on LinkedIn. And don't forget to tag me so I can say thanks. I would be tremendously grateful also if you would leave a review on Apple Podcasts. More reviews means more people can find us. This episode was brought to you by the Impact Coach Collective, where executive coaches grow their businesses in a community of peers with business, education, mentoring, deal clinics and more. If you'd like to contact me or work with me further, all my free resources, courses and more info on the Impact Coach Collective have can be found@elliscarf.com have a brilliant week and I look forward to talking to you again soon.