I talk to consultants regularly and I often ask, “How is COVID affecting your sales?” Consistently, the answer is negative. My next question, “how exactly has it affected your numbers?” And, most have no idea because they were not tracking their numbers before. Having tracked sales and marketing numbers for a long time, I can tell you that COVID did hurt our numbers right at the start of shutdowns for 2 weeks, it then helped our numbers tremendously (twice as good as I had seen previously) and now we are in the “normal” range of results.
Tracking valuable metrics is important for a few reasons:
- You do not have to guess what to do based upon feelings or group think
- You can adjust quickly in a changing environment to minimize lost opportunities
A key part of the story above is that we adjusted our systems based on what the data was telling us two weeks into sheltering to change our outcomes. If sales and marketing still feel mostly emotional, it is time to start tracking your data. Otherwise, you are flying blind and this is not the time to take a chance like that.