These two simple principles are enormously powerful in improving the effectiveness of any business function and they are especially effective for Marketing and Sales. Yet the accurate and specific measurement of these functions is one of the most ignored or poorly implemented of business tools because it's hard to do right.

Managing a business function without measuring it accurately is like flying blind. Arriving at your destination is a matter of luck rather than good navigation. Only exact measurement can tell the truth about what is really happening

Get what you want by measuring it.

When you measure something directly, you affect it without even trying. If you want to increase sales, you must measure it exactly and accurately. If you measure a surrogate metric like number of sales calls, you will increase the number of sales calls but not necessarily sales. You have to measure the direct performance of the people responsible for the metric that you want to improve. Just by measuring their performance you will improve it without any other corrective action.

If you want to measure the effectiveness of a direct marketing program. You must measure not only the number of leads that were generated but how much sales are attributed to those leads. If you only measure the number of leads, then you will get programs that generate lots of leads but not necessarily leads that purchase your product. This has been shown dramatically by actual experience. (Case Study)