Peerview Data Insights

What are your employees really worth?

For a lot of us, when we're happy with them they're priceless; when we're not, they're worthless.

Unfortunately, that kind of gut-level assessment isn't very objective.

That's why we analyzed performance data from over 1000 professional services companies (law firms, ad agencies, architects, engineers, accountants, etc.) to see if there was a better benchmark for productivity.

Our findings?

For most companies, a good target range is between $150k to $200k in revenue-per-employee.

That's not to say that there weren't industry differences — law firms, for example, average a bit more than accountants — or regional differences — coastal cities were higher than Midwestern suburbs  — but most fell into that range.

Why?

Do followers and connections make a difference?

Maybe.

After analyzing data from about 2300 companies (mostly professional and financial services, but also retail, manufacturing and healthcare) we noticed an interesting link between fast-growing companies and the social media footprints of the owners and executives behind them, particularly in terms of LinkedIN connections.

When we looked at Twitter, Facebook and company pages on LinkedIN, high-growth companies usually had a more robust presence than slow- or no-growth companies, but the difference wasn't nearly as pronounced as when we compared the # of LinkedIN connections among owners and executives: High-growth owners/executives averaged nearly 2.5 times the connections of slow or no-growth companies, 500+ vs. <200.

(We ignored Google+ — sorry, Google — and are still gathering info on Instagram.)

It's important to note that correlation is not causation, and the link didn't hold 100% of the time among the companies we sampled.

• Dull.
• Boring.
• Afraid of change.
• Afraid of risk.
• Set-in-their-ways.
• Uninspiring.

For the longest time, you could pretty much describe any CFO with a word or two from that list.

Not anymore.

Increasingly, CFOs — especially those making a name for themselves — are redefining their role, moving beyond traditional responsibilities like number-crunching and bill-paying to set and control strategy.

Why?

This quote in The Los Angeles Times from Sergio Monsalve, a partner with Norwest Venture Partners, neatly sums it up:

"The world is moving to caring a lot about two things: money and data," Monsalve says. "There's only one person in the company who touches both in an intimate way, and that happens to be the CFO.”

Software as a Service (SaaS) is exploding, projected to become a $50.8B market by 2018.

By now, everyone's heard the news that Ashley Madison, the "dating site for married people," was hacked and its entire user database was posted online.

Divorce lawyers are scrambling and finger-waivers are noting bold-faced names like reality TV star Josh Duggar, Florida State Attorney Jeff Ashton and YouTube evangelist Sam Radar.

Entrepreneurs?

Most are wondering what Ashley Madison's business model can teach them.

1. Your company is only worth what somebody will pay for it.
2. Test. Refine. Scale. Repeat.
3. Success isn't about being best, it’s about trying to be better.
4. Loyalty flows up, not down.
5. The more people cc’d on an email, the less important it is.
6. Hire for character first, passion second, and experience third.
7. The most strategic thing a company can create is a budget.
8. If the most strategic thing your company creates isn't a budget, you're probably in trouble.
9. Cash flow is king.
10. Profitability is the spoiled, over-indulged princess that everybody pays attention to when the king lets her run the kingdom.
11. The queen varies by industry.
12. Customer retention is more cost-effective than customer acquisition, but it's not nearly as much fun.
13. Performance is relative.
14. Every business problem has a solution, but that doesn't mean you'll like it.
15. Be authentic, even if you're a prick.
16. If it weren’t for meetings, nothing would get done — not because meetings are productive but because the spontaneous interactions before and after are.
17. Control what you can, not what you can’t.
18. Thanks to social media, every company is one tweet, post or update away from disaster.
19. Know who's really in charge.
20. When you're an entrepreneur, your only safey net is you.
21. Everybody thinks their business is unique.
22. All businesses are more alike than they're different, despite what everybody thinks.
23. Nobody is an industry of one. Everybody competes for customers and clients.
24. Confident trumps smart, but only in the short term.
25. Everybody needs a good lawyer.
26. There's a potential rock star in every company who's being over-looked.
27. Praise is a more effective motivator than money.
28. A business plan is to success, what traffic school is to a speeding ticket.
29. 1/3 up front for new clients.
30. Your most powerful marketing tool is a satisfied customer.
31. Share insights.
32. Thanks to social media, your employees are your brand.
33. Sometimes the most obvious problems are the hardest to see.
34. Get more sleep.
35. Starting a company is easy; growing a company is hard.
36. Sometimes you have to burn bridges.
37. You become an employee the instant you take money from investors, no matter how much equity you retain.
38. Nothing is ever perfect.
39. Creativity is messy and it throws off a ton of sparks.
40. A great business model is simple; a bad business model is complicated.
41. Get it in writing.
42. There’s no such thing as work-life balance for entrepreneurs, only strategic neglect.
43. Being data-informed is better than being data-driven.
44. Pick your business partner(s) wisely.
45. Everything is marketing.
46. Everything is branding, too.
47. If you want to improve your business, act like a SaaS company.
48. Noboby expects the Spanish Inquisition.
49. Stop and listen to the person who says the least in a meeting.
50. Business plans are bullshit, but you still need one if you want to raise money.
51. Most angel investors will turn out to be devils.
52. If you don't care, quit.
53. Everybody gets burned out eventually. 
54. Read a non-fiction book about a completely unrelated industry at least once every three years.
55. Pay your interns.
56. You can't solve a problem by ignoring it.
57. Or tabling it.
58. Every company should know it's CLTV.
59. If you want to motivate your sales team, play this clip from Glengarry Glen Ross.
60. Be on time.
61. What you spend on marketing isn't nearly as important as what you spend your marketing money on.
62. Share your failures.
63. Doing the right thing doesn't always pay off. (Unfortunately.)
64. Forgive once.
65. The single best book on creativity is "A Technique for Producing Ideas" by James Webb Young. It was written in 1965 and nobody has even come close to topping it.
66. Women are underpaid.
67. Don't ask to be promoted, ask what you should do if you want to be promoted.
68. A contract is only as good as the lawyer who's challenging it.
69. Taxes... ugh!
70. Sometimes you just have to wear your cleanest dirty shirt. 
71. Content marketing takes more time and effort than anyone admits.
72. Investors travel in packs.
73. Companies rot from the bottom up.
74. Don't pivot just to pivot.
75. A good budget is shaped by the past and inspired by the future.
76. If you're not measuring, you're not marketing.
77. Not everything happens for a reason.
78. Valuations aren't rational.
79. If you don't know what a "stop, start, kill" exercise is, you probably need to do one tomorrow.
80. You can manage for growth, you can manage for profitability or you can manage for value. Not all three.
81. Nothing kills a company faster than bad culture.
82. For most companies, the unofficial employee could be titled The Emperor's New Clothes.
83. Every founder will eventually discover "The trough of sorrow."
84. Get to 1000 customers any way you can.
85. HR matters.
86. 90% of revenue is momentum. (This is a metaphor, not a statistic.) 
87. Nobody every tells you how important it is to be lucky.
88. Everybody is expendable under the right circumstances.
89. If you want to engage your employees, challenge them.
90. The phrase "Measure twice, cut once" applies to marketing, too.
91. A good pitch explains; a great pitch inspires.
92. Knowing your limitations is smart; accepting them is dumb.
93. Just because you can do a job doesn't mean you can — or need to be able to — manage that job; just because you can manage a job doesn't mean you can — or need to be able to — do that job.
94. You can't just reverse-engineer success.
95. If you're in marketing, you'll be a lot less confused and overwhelmed by the incredibly rapid pace of change if you subscribe to the Marketing Technology blog.
96. Debt is a tool for experts.
97. There are hundreds of metrics every business should track, but these are the ones that matter the most.
98. Sometimes the hard way is the only way.
99. ___________________ *

Here's why we ask:

Interest in our Strategic Management & Planning tool has grown steadily since we launched, yet there are still plenty of solid prospects who watch a video, read a blog post, or listen to an in-person sales pitch and say "We don't really need that."

First, we have to acknowledge that some degree of skepticism is to be expected because even though we think our tool helps companies improve their growth, value and profitability by becoming more competitive, we're not giving it away free, leaving some to wonder if there's a catch.

(There isn't.)

What's interesting is that when we talk through these objections, we find they almost always trace back to the same thing: an almost gut-level susupicion of what data will make people do.

It's like there's a fear that hardcore performance data is some kind of demonic force, or mutant zombie virus that will instantly seize control of anyone it comes in contact with:

An exaggeration? Yes.

But it makes the point: data doesn't replace common sense.

Or reason.

Or logic.

(Or whatever you call it when you do something you know isn't great, or even sometimes good, but represents a kind of lowest-common-denominator compromise that solves more problems than it creates and makes key stakeholders happy.)