What gets measured gets…?

One of my favorite boards to be on is the AMA (American Marketing Association) Atlanta Executive Board. And each year, that board participates in a white paper and this year’s topic was What Gets Measured Gets…?

A favorite saying of one of my mentors is “What gets measured gets done.” He would say that at almost every one of the Engauge board meetings and I really took that to heart. When I talk to startups, one of the first things I can deduce is how likely they are to be successful by learning what and how they measure their key metrics. If their prospecting and pipeline management is half-hazard, they’re probably going to have a tough time building a robust business development machine.

I’m quoted in this white paper a few times and I thought I’d share some of that here:

“A good dashboard needs to translate to the goals of the company. You’re on a journey and the dashboard should tell you where you are on the journey.”

“Our dashboard helps my team understand the important metrics and it keeps people focused on the important things. Everyone is aware of where we stand, how we’re performing against plan, and where we’re behind or exceeding plan. The dashboard keeps people accountable.”

“We track things like 5 star reviews, total downloads, the number of people playing right now and the percent of people converting to in-app purchases. We can also look at a map of where people playing the game at any given moment and the number of players by country.”

“For an app company, Apple’s iTunes app store is a dashboard. We can look at our ranking in the app store in each category (e.g., arcade games, top grossing games, and number of reviews by category).”