Think business like a sports coach

Coaching has come on a long way in recent years. Gone are the days where only gut feel and experience counted. Now a top coach has a huge range of diagnostic data at their fingertips to make better recommendations and come up with more effective plans.

What do I mean by diagnostic data?

This is data that breaks the game down into its component parts so you can measure the causal factors behind any result. My sport is Rugby. At the end of the game, the coach can assess if the team lost because of poor scrums, bad line outs, lack of line breaks, handling errors, penalties. And each player is measured in metres gained, tackles made etc.

This matters because in the upcoming training sessions the coach and the team know what to focus on to improve. With limited time available, laser-like concentration on where you get the best return on effort is crucial to winning next time.

Too often in business, we spend hours agonizing over sales data. Did we “win or lose”, i.e. are sales up or down? Where did we lose sales, who did better, when and where – we can get a mass of data on performance. But what about the causes? How much data do we really have on what causes these good or bad sales?

This is our focus at Shopper Intelligence. We bring in metrics about the drivers of the purchase, not just the purchase. We look directly at the shopper, considering what the shopper thinks and wants, and now as well, how they go about to make choices in the store, during the process of deciding what to buy.

We say this is crucial for you in making recommendations on how your organisation focuses on effort (time and money) to improve results — measuring the contributing components of the sale points you at what you most need to change – just like a sports coach. If you don’t know our data, ask for a free demo.