When the all the hoopla dies down, only one Superbowl team walks away with the Vince Lombardi trophy.
And the other walks away in defeat…
Same for the entertainers at half time. Careers are won and lost. The Black-Eyed Peas performance in 2011 was panned by critics and fans. Madonna said playing the Superbowl was the most nerve-wracking gig of her life.
When Beyonce takes the stage at half time will she lip sync or do it live? Either way, she’ll need to bring her A game. Her Monday morning’s stat’s on product sales and fan numbers will tell a story of victory – or defeat.
You probably don’t face that kind of pressure in your business. But how do you measure performance?
If you don’t get feedback at every stage, your growth engine may stall.
One key metric is how many of your customers turn into evangelists for your business. A simple way to gauge this is to track your “NPS”, or Net Promoter Score.
NPS was birthed by Fred Reichheld, a partner at Boston consulting firm Bain & Co. (Yes, Mitt’s group) and a pioneer in the study of customer loyalty. After ten years of analysis he devised a simple one question survey for customers. You ask them to tell you on a scale of one to ten how likely they are to recommend your product or service to a friend or colleague.
Customer scores on the survey sort them into one of three groups:
Promoters: 9 or 10
Passives: 7 or 8
Detractors: 6 or below
Your NPS is the percentage of promoters minus percentage of detractors. So if 75% of your customers are promoters and 21% are detractors, your NPS is 54.
Small businesses like Quickparts, an Atlanta based maker of custom parts for companies like Intel and Whirlpool, have made NPS a key strategic goal. One year their NPS went from 48 to 63 and their customer referrals rose 25%, a direct correlation, according to co-founder Ron Hollis.
Not hard to implement, you can hand out a one page survey at live events, run a phone poll at the end of customer service calls or send people to a web form. With Infusionsoft, you can add an automated step and tracking at any point in your marketing funnel where you “deliver the goods” for customers.
Of course the key is making change based on the data. Reinforce what’s working and get to work on what’s not. Nurture and reward your promoters.
And keep on asking. Your customers can tell you a lot about how to grow your business. And your promoters will grow it for you!
Did you find this helpful?
Comment below, and let me know! 🙂
