Time is Your New Measure of Business Success

Why Is Tracking Time Important?

Have you considered the value of giving your time to your team members?  You can learn how you and every member of your business can be more productive if you look at success differently.  If a salesperson works 40 hours a week, makes 150 calls, books 15 new appointments, provides 10 new quotes, and closes 4 new deals worth $20,000 in monthly recurring revenue, is she successful? Maybe, but are these real measures of success? Yes, measuring these things are still important.  But, what is more important is measuring the time they spent on each of these tasks.  By measuring the time, you can holistically look at the “processes” and streamline efforts to do even more with the same 40 hours.  

Some examples of how I have helped businesses be more successful by understanding the process and applying innovation to improve the processes.

• Large International Hardware Manufacture – Helped the Global Director of Software Development understand where the teams were ineffective while coaching them on how to be effective, high-performing teams.  After 3 days of discovery, training, and building automation. We then scheduled a three-week sprint [dedicated collaboration cycle) for this small team to close two projects. 
  
  One of these projects was estimated (in advance of training) to take 4-5 weeks for the team to finish.  We finished the first project in under two days.
  
  The second project was estimated at 8 months to complete. We finished the second project in a little over two weeks. 
  
  In addition to completing both projects, employee morale went from bad to exceptional.  Most importantly, the team members learned to work as a highly functioning team. The now highly functioning team decided that once a month, they would have an “Innovation Hack Friday”. This is a day that the team would come together to work as a team on any project that was NOT on the project list. The team members would bring in community projects they would vote on and then work as a team to give back to local non-profits or community groups. Before learning how to work as a team, Friday was the day that there were always people out sick or on vacation. These Fridays had almost nobody out. Innovation Hack Friday was so valuable to the business that they turned it into a bi-weekly occurrence.
  
  RESULT=SAVED $1.2 MILLION in the first six months, drastically increased employee satisfaction and business reporting effectiveness.
  
• Small Financial Services Company – The sales force for this company would take calls to collect loan application details from prospects.  It would take them as much as 45 minutes to collect all the information needed for the loan application. 
  
  After some coaching and “innovation,” we were able to change the process of how they collect information.  We had them only collect as much information as they needed to pull a credit report on the prospect. 
  
  We put a button on the data entry application that automatically reads the form and pulls a credit report. They could complete this minimal information in less than 5 minutes. In the first 5 minutes, 80% of the applicants could be denied without spending another 40 minutes collecting useless information since there is no way the applicant could get a loan. 
   
  RESULT=350%+ INCREASE IN SALES PERFORMANCE, a massive increase in business profitability and employee morale. Salespersons were now making significantly more money!

How Do You Measure Success for Your Business? 

Most businesses measure success using Key Performance Indices (KPI), Return on Investment (ROI), YoY/MoM sales or revenue.  More advanced businesses will use Objectives and Key Results (OKR), a much better way to track success.  KPIs and OKRs are very flexible in that you can add KPIs and OKRs for anything that can be measured.   What does your business measure?

Most Businesses Measure:

Sales / Receipts; Expenses; Volume of…; Billable Hours; Employee Satisfaction; Customer Satisfaction; Any Number of Others

There are significant issues with this list. First, Employee Satisfaction and Customer Satisfaction should be at the top of this list instead of at the bottom.  Second, it does not include the most important measure, TIME. 

Important Elements to Measure

1. TIME given (to others – being present)
2. TIME given back (not taken from others)
3. TIME improved (helping self and others save/optimize time)

What do customers, employees, vendors, and partners all want?  They want and need more time. Most people do not have the skills to effectively manage the time they have, let alone help others optimize their time. Please jump off the hamster wheel, take a few deep breaths, and decide to take control of time. Confirm to yourself, “it is time to Give TIME to my team and customers”. “It is time for the entire team to GIVE QUALITY TIME to each other and our customers”. Then, get some help!

It is TIME to build a business culture around caring for each other and recognizing that the most valuable resource anyone can give is TIME.  If we take too much time from anyone or do not give enough time to them, they will fail.  If they fail, we all fail! 

Now is the Time for Change. 

If you change how you measure success, you will ultimately change how you think about time. You will learn to optimize, measure, and properly prioritize TIME.  1- Time, 2-Family/Self, 3-Employees, and 4-Customers. When you get the TIME measurements right, success in all metrics WILL follow.

As business owners and managers, we must think outside the box and think about how we can truly help those we are in business with.  It is TIME to make a difference.  You can make a difference by giving your team and all those that you work with more time.  How can you do this?  Let technology work for you so you can focus on what is most important.  It does take time, but once you decide to focus on time and get some help, you will be rewarded with more time for the rest of your life and business life.

jIT Solutions, Your Innovation Partner for Giving you TIME to Succeed!

jIT Solutions can help you understand how to measure time and use it as your measurement for business success.  They can coach you on how to do it yourself, create automation, or use other technical tools to streamline your processes.  jIT can teach you how to implement continuous innovation in your business.  Once this is done, you will be successful, using whatever metric you like to measure success, even TIME.  Do you have TIME to SAVE TIME?  If not, “Will there ever be a better time to get more time than now?” Allow jIT Solutions to help you free up the time you need to spend time with your family, team, and customers. Ultimately, you will have the time to run your business efficiently. Give us a call to set up a complimentary consultation at 508-947-1478 or send an email to dan@jitsolutionsit.com. We look forward to serving you and giving you TIME to focus on your family, team, customers, and business.

By Dan Stolts, Author