Episode 58: What’s your Business IQ?

Unlocking Business Intelligence: A Guide to Data-Driven Decision Making for B2B Service Providers

Successful businesses know they can't make informed decisions on what to do next without data.

This episode is for you if you're a small business owner and don't know where to start.

Learn how to leverage business intelligence to make your small business more efficient and profitable.

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Collab with Kiva.

See you next time!

Are you ready to take massive action in your business and harness the power of data in your decision-making? Let’s chat 👇🏽

Podcast Transcript:

0:01

Hello and welcome to Collab with Kiva. I'm your host Kiva Slade. From the marbled halls of the US Congress to my racing themed office chair. I've learned that there is no perfect path to the life of your dreams. My journey over the past 20 years has included being a Legislative Director for a member of Congress, Policy Director for a nonprofit, stay- at-home mom, homeschooling mom, jewelry business owner, and now the owner of a service based business. Whether your journey has been a straight line, or full of zigs and zags. Join me and my guest as we share insights, hope and lessons learned from our female entrepreneurship journeys. Made the collaborative sharing of our stories be the tide that lifts your boat, let's dive in.

0:56

What's your business IQ? Today's episode is a bit nerdy and a bit Cher Moonstruck slappy. Last week, I had a Voxer conversation about pricing an offer with a friend. She had received feedback that it was too high, and other feedback that it was too low. Additionally, I found another person with a similar offer that was double the amount of hers with no discernible difference in the tangibles. When I've worked with clients about pricing their offers, whenever there's a lack of confidence in the offer number, it shows up in their selling. You've seen the offers with 1000s of extras because they don't think you will see the value or realize their lack of confidence in their pricing. Pricing is one aspect of your business intelligence, your biz IQ. We each have a friend or we are that friend doing all the things in their marketing. Yet when asked, they don't know which channels bring in potential clients which blog posts have good SEO, or any real clear understanding of the journey that their customer takes. Marketing is another aspect of your business intelligence.

2:26

Recently, I mailed two packages on the same day at the Postal Service. Both packages were sent Priority Mail. One made it to its destination on the expected delivery date. The other has yet to be delivered. I have two different case numbers with the Postal Service, have spoken to their national call center twice again. It wasn't until I spoke to the main post office that the bizarre tracking history started to make sense. Operationally, though, there's been some hiccups that caused that initial misrouting of the package. So the local rep was able to explain things and provide me with a firmer answer to when the package will be delivered.

3:10

Operations is another aspect of your business intelligence. Gartner Inc. estimates that by 2026, up to 65% of B2B sales companies will shift their sales models to rely more on data driven decisions. Their tech stack will be purposely built to unite data with analytics and workflows to improve consumer engagement, adapt tactics, predict sales, and simplify workflows. This is a big deal. Evidence of the industry tools many of us use are heading in this direction was revealed recently by Google and the online space dashboards have become a popular way to visualize data. Google recently purchased Looker studio and renamed its Data Studio product to Looker studio. Janky naming aside, they also implemented API quota limits causing many beautiful dashboards to rake. Essentially, they weren't broken, broken, but they also couldn't retrieve data so they kind of were broken. Google has clearly indicated by where it is house Looker studio, it ceases as part of its business intelligence arm more than its marketing analytics arm, which is where Data Studio was. You might be thinking, why is this important? With the launch of Google Analytics for Google has included a free connection to BigQuery, their database SQL, and they actually suggest SQL queries will be the way to get around those pesky API limitations.

4:52

The reality is data is everywhere. Every second of every minute of every hour of every day, we are producing more and more data. Years ago, it was like 2.4 quintillion bytes. Okay, so harnessing that data and using it to inform your decisions is the next frontier for small businesses. So let's dive a little deeper into what is business intelligence. And I'll start with the definition. Business intelligence, also known as BI transform data into valuable information that can guide decisions, identify trends, and drive growth. It involves implementing the right tools and processes to gather, organize, visualize, and interpret data. The end goal is to get a complete view of the business and its different areas. Okay, again, we're going for a complete view. Hubspot shares a few examples of business intelligence. So, one way that you can have business intelligence is to analyze your financial data to track revenue, profits and other KPIs, analyze customer preferences, and behavior, track sales and marketing performance, identify issues and bottlenecks in operations. Identify which operations need to be optimized. Hey, reroute that package, identify trends within the business and in the marketplace. For example, an Ecommerce company could use BI to determine their most popular products among consumers. If consumers or customers are experiencing common problems with their products or services, or if there are delays or bottlenecks in the delivery of goods.

6:48

Really important, especially during this Christmas season when things are being mailed. Or if you want to streamline your sales process, you could use BI to automate reporting of sales performance. Analyzing sales data in real time allows you to optimize your sales and lead generation strategies. You could also create a dashboard to monitor customer satisfaction and identify the most common causes of customer churn to prevent it before it happens. In addition, many businesses use BI to keep track of financial metrics, such as your monthly recurring revenue, annual recurring revenue, to make sure that you're on track to hit your targets. If not, you can quickly make pivot strategies to increase revenue. For small business owners, especially those in the B2B space, I want you to think of BI as impacting your finances, operations, and marketing.

7:49

Earlier this fall, I attended a virtual gathering of measurement and analytics folks, and the general consensus was that no longer could data be on the back burner of your business. It needs to be baked into every thing you do. And trust me, I get it, it may feel overwhelming and daunting. I told you there was some shear slapping in here. The reality is though for some businesses, it will be longer and harder the longer you wait to develop a plan and start executing. The smaller your business, the easier it is to wrangle together the pieces. As your business grows, so does the complexity of creating a plan. But it's also worth it. A 2020 report from McKinsey Global Institute shows that data driven organizations are 23 times more likely to acquire customers, six times as likely to retain customers, and 19 times as likely to be profitable as a result. Hey, who doesn't want those numbers. Additionally, in the 2021 Forrester Insights- Driven Business Set the Pace for Global Growth Report, they found that insights driven businesses are growing at an average of more than 30% each year, and by 2021. Last year, they were predicted to take 1.8 trillion annually from their less informed peers. That number will only continue to rise in the coming years. And who wants to be the less informed peer? The noise levels around us continue to rise and business intelligence is your key to separating yourself from the competition. The only way to ensure your business is set up for success is by doing the legwork in integrating business intelligence into your long term roadmap.

9:42

I'm hosting a workshop on Friday, December 16. To dive into this topic and help you with plan development. As a CEO of your business, it is incumbent upon you to set the stage for the importance of the role data should play in your everyday decision. The workshop link will be in the show notes and I look forward to seeing you there. Because I know that each of you do not want to be that less informed peer. So, stay tuned for the next episode. Make sure to go visit the website, the516collaborative.com/podcast, and get yourself that link in order to attend. See you soon.

10:24

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Collab with Kiva. Each of us has a different path. And I hope that this episode gave you some takeaway that has left you inspired and motivated to keep pressing forward on your unique path. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss out on any future episodes. And of course, your reviews on Apple are greatly appreciated. You're a small business owner, ready to start making data driven decisions in your business. And you know that without the data, you're really just guessing, make sure to visit my website, the516collaborative.com and let's schedule a time to talk to make sure that you can harness the power of data in your business. I'll see you next time. Bye.

Meet Kiva Slade - the Founder and CEO of The 516 Collaborative. With a unique background in high-power politics on Capitol Hill and sixteen years as a homeschooling mama, Kiva found her calling in the online business world as a trusted guide for entrepreneurs looking to build the business of their dreams.

Kiva's work began behind the scenes, orchestrating the back end of businesses and managing teams. But her inner data diva couldn't help but notice that small businesses needed help harnessing the power of data for growth. So she and her team set out to uncover and tidy up the data required to enable clients to grow their businesses confidently and easily.