One of the most critical requirements to success in any venture is tracking your metrics.  Read any book on succeeding in any area and it’ll tell you the same thing.  You need to measure and track metrics.

If you’ve caught this coaching series in the middle, please take the time to start at the beginning of the coaching series and get yourself caught up!  Otherwise read on and I’ll go into what metrics are and why are they important.

Last week, I talked about Your First Day at a Client Site ^[1].

Hopefully, you’ve gotten the ball rolling and have been talking to or working for clients.  Do you want more success in this craft?  Well then it’s time to measure, record and track your metrics.

This lesson is titled “Tracking Your Metrics as a Self-Employed Pharmacist”.

If you operate based on “gut instinct,” or you make assumptions on how your business is performing without knowing the facts, you’ll run into problems quickly without knowing why.  When you reach a point where you’d like to improve your business you won’t know where to start.

There is a solution. A simple one.  By monitoring a few key metrics, you can quickly gain a handle on your business and start on the path to improving your profitability.

What’s a Metric?

By metric I mean, any type of measurement related to an area you’re trying to get a handle on or improve.  That’s my definition anyways.  For example,

Let’s say you want to lose weight what do you do?  You weigh yourself now, record it somewhere.  You decide on a strategy to lose weight.  Then you weigh yourself throughout and after your strategy is implemented.  The result provides an indication of how well your strategy works.

This is true for any metric for anything you want to improve.  You can’t manage, improve or succeed it if you can’t measure it.

4 Major Benefits of Monitoring Metrics
There are many advantages to monitoring metrics.  But, I’m going to list 4 major ones here.

• Accurately Assess – Measuring key areas now gives you a better idea of where you really are

• Clarify Goals – Deciding on metrics forces you to focus on what areas you want to improve

• Improve Performance – If you want to improve a certain area.  Track it.

• Promotes Creativity – Sometimes what you think will improve you numbers really doesn’t when it comes down to looking at the actual numbers.  To really improve your numbers sometimes requires out of the box thinking.  As you practice using these metrics you’ll find that interesting things will increase your success rate.  For example, one consulting friend of mine noticed a 15% call rate increase from one of his marketing letters over another.  What was the only difference?  The more successful one had a blue line under his heading.  I’m not saying each of your headings should have a blue line under it.  All I’m saying is, experiment and try different things to improve your numbers

The Two metrics I want you to track, for now…

Marketing Letter Success Rate – this is an important piece of information.  If you have no clients you have no business.  You want to make your marketing letter persuasive enough to get that independent pharmacy owner to call you.  Track how well your marketing letter is doing.  Don’t just give up if one letter doesn’t do well.  Rewrite and change it and try again until your callback rate improves.

Lead Generation Success Rate – Track the sources you’re getting your independent pharmacy leads from.  Oftentimes pharmacies close, the data you’re using is outdated.  Focus your efforts on the sources that give you the most reliable data.  Otherwise you’ll be wasting a lot of your time.

Implementing Other Metrics
Getting started with metrics is easier than you might think.  Once you get the hang of it and understand how much it can improve your business, I’m sure some of you over-achievers out there will come up with some others to track.

If you need a little help coming up with some metrics here is a six step process.

1. Define Your Goals. Make a list of business goals. Goals might include increased clientele, increased retention rate (how many clients call you back), increased clientele in a specific area…etc..etc…
2. Define the Metrics. For each business goal on your list, write down a metric that will help you track your progress to success. For example, if your goal is increase your cash flow, your metrics might involve tracking all business related expenses and coming up with a strategy to decrease your expenses.
3. Benchmark Current Status. Once you established your metrics, you need to measure them. You must determine exactly how your business is doing, even if the truth is hard to swallow. By establishing the current value of each metric, you will be able to track your improvements in the future.
4. Put in Place a System to Monitor and Report Metrics. You may need to add new business processes that will help you calculate and report your metrics. For example, is the number of your customers who view your customer service as being “excellent,” then you may want to survey your customers every month and ask them how you are doing.
5. Review the Metrics and Make Decisions. With your metrics in place, you have greater insight into which strategies work and which don’t. Review the metrics and take steps to improve your results.
6. Promote Successes. When your metrics improve to the point you reach your goal.  Sit back for a bit and go back to step 1.

Metrics Best Practices
As you move towards using business metrics to manage and improve your business, follow these suggestions:

• It’s important not to have too many metrics. Concentrate on only a handful of metrics that are necessary.

• Choose the right frequency of measurement. If you only measure a metric once a year, you may not get the information in time to take the necessary corrective actions.

• Periodically reevaluate your metrics. Your business priorities change over time, and your metrics will need to be modified accordingly.

• Be creative

Reaping the Rewards of Business Metrics
Effective use of business metrics can have a profound impact on your business. As you gain a better understanding of your business and move closer to achieving important goals, your day-to-day work will become easier.  You’ll make decisions based on data, without the confusion of emotional input or informational overload.

What’s Next?
Put aside a couple hours to get started with your business metrics initiative. Decide what metrics you need, do some initial benchmarking and get started.

Remember what you don’t know can hurt you.

Business metrics can keep you aware of how your business is faring and ensure your business is in good health and on the right track. Collect appropriate metrics on your business, summarize and make them useful, and you will have a powerful new tool for managing your business.

Next Week’s Lesson – Get Out There and Do It As A Self-Employed Contract Pharmacist

Now you have a good idea of where your business is and where you want it to go.

Next lesson, will be a motivational get out there and do it lesson.   You have everything you need now to get started in this.  All you really need is the motivation to actually do it.

This concludes this week’s lesson.  Get out there and prepare for success.

If you liked this lesson, sign up for our email newsletter.  That way you definitely won’t miss a chapter and you’ll get the entire coaching series free!

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