Are you using KPIs for your team? This is something that is talked about a lot in business, but I will admit that it’s not something that I have been great at over the years. Some roles are easy to create KPIs for, and some are just more challenging. 

In this week’s quick tip episode of Art of Online Business, I am helping you determine how to create KPIs for a role like an executive assistant or a VA that will help you measure success and create clarity around what each team member contributes. 

When team members have KPIs defined, they are more driven to succeed. It’s almost like their scorecard. It’s important that there are clear results determined for each role in your business. Whether it’s a social media manager, executive assistant, online business manager, or VA, each of those people has numbers that they are responsible for. 

There’s always a way to create a KPI for each role, you just have to shift your focus to the results you want from each task. 

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• What KPIs are
• Why each role needs KPIs
• Different types of KPIs you can assign to each role
• How to make sure the tasks they are assigned align with the desired results
• How to make sure the results are moving your business forward

Links & Resources:

• The Art of Online Business website
• DM me on Instagram
• Visit my YouTube channel
• The Art of Online Business clips on YouTube
• Full episodes of The Art of Online Business Podcast on YouTube
• The Art of Online Business Podcast website
• Check out my Accelerator coaching program

*Disclosure: I only recommend products I use and love and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission.

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Other Episodes You’ll Enjoy:

How Online Businesses Can Win During a Recession, with Jacquette Timmons

You DON’T Need Social Media to Grow Your Business

How Listening to Your Body Can Actually Help You Scale Your Business, with Susi Hately

Transcript: 

Hey, my friend, welcome to the Art of Online Business Podcast. My name is Rick Mullaney and I’m an online business coach. I’m an ad’s expert, and most importantly, I’m a dad. And this show is where we help established online course creators and coaches create more profit, more impact with less hustle. All right, let’s get into it. All right. What is up, my friend? Psyched about this episode because this is a this is a topic that comes up all the time. And this is something that I have done a terrible job with over the years. And I’ll be completely honest with you, this is something that I have really worked on over the past couple of years. And so in the not so distant past. And once you get this down, this completely changes your business. And we’re talking today about creating KPIs or setting KPIs for your team. And I’m going to do this through the lens of kind of a harder role, if you will, in your business to create KPIs for. And so we’ll do it in the form of a VA or an executive assistant or VA. And I understand there are two different they can be two different roles, but. First of all let’s set the let’s set the foundation here of KPI equals key performance indicator is basically what is a metric that you can track to know whether you are being successful in a given. Task or four for a given task and each person on your team, this is going to sound terrible. 

But there are people. Right. But each person has a number. They’re not a number. They have a number. And when people have clarity around the progress that they’re making or not making towards a given result. They are more driven. They’re more bought into what they’re doing. They like having that scorecard. Right. And I’ve talked about scorecards here in the podcast previously, and I’m going to do another full episode coming up here in the show in the in the very not so distant future, all about metrics across the business, knowing your numbers. And so but as a business owner, but what I want to talk about is what kind of KPIs do you set? Why are they important? Some roles are harder than others, right? In last week’s Quick Tip episode, I talked about a social media role, and I made the argument that you do not need social media to grow your business, but if you are doing social, you must be intentional about why you’re doing it. And when I mean by intentional is you are looking for clear results from that role and that is no different than any role on your business, whether it’s a salesperson, whether it’s a copywriter, whether it is an online business manager, a marketing assistant, an executive assistant, a VA, whatever it is in your team, each person is going to have a number or numbers that they are responsible for, and oftentimes they get the question, Well, what are KPIs for a VA? How do I know that person just doing general things like my email or calendar or what have you? You can absolutely set up numbers for a role like that because when you’re talking about sales, for example, those are very easy KPIs to come up with, right? So number of sales calls booked, number of sales made, number of leads, number of new leads coming in, etc., etc.. 

Those are very, very tangible and easy to come up with. What is often not so easy is a role like we’re talking about here in this example in terms of an E. And so the first thing that you want to do is you’ve got to create clarity. You’ve got to have clarity around what the role is responsible for. What is the role? Of the role in your business. Right. And so why? What is this person doing? In this role. I don’t mean like Sally, what is Sally doing? What is the role responsible for? And so we want to get clarity on that. And this question came up in our accelerator Facebook group recently where it was this exact question, how do I set KPIs for for my VA? And so as when I’m coaching my job, when I’m coaching, is to dig in with questions. I want to get to the core of what’s being asked so we can get you past whatever you’re you’re hung up on or stuck, stuck on. 

And so that was the first question. Well, in order to answer what KPIs, we have to first know, what is this role responsible for? And so this person said, so they’re going to do like our Instagram graphics and our reels. They’re going to create worksheets. They’re going to welcome new people into a Facebook group. They’re going to DM people. When they join the Facebook group, they’re going to send out messages and reminders to watch a webinar, send emails to podcast guests, etc., etc.. And so, first of all, the first thing you want to do is when you come up with that list of what this role is responsible for. Then we want to look at what results are being created by this role. So what results are being created by sending messages and reminders to to people to watch a webinar? Why is that important? I mean, that one’s kind of obvious, right? But this person also said, you know, this VA rule would be setting up weekly Facebook group live streams of each week’s podcast episodes. Okay. Great. How does that fit into the goals of the business? What results is that creating that action or that I should say that activity creating? And so it turned out that many of the of the tasks that this VA role was going to have were social media and, you know, Facebook group related in this business.

And so after getting this kind of clarity, after looking at, och, these are all the tasks, activities that I want to happen in this in this role. Okay, great. What are the results? I keep saying this. What are the results that this role is responsible for? And are the activities and tasks that you just came up with? Aligning with getting those results. Maybe, maybe not. And that’s where the metrics can come in and be really, really powerful, because now you can clearly see what kind of progress or not progress not making progress towards whatever the result goal is. And so. Putting a KPI to something like welcoming new Facebook group members or welcoming new people into the Facebook group. Could be. Welcomes new Facebook group members within 12 hours of their joining the group in both the group and in DMS. Pretty measurable. Right. It’s either happening or it isn’t. That’s the idea. When you are setting KPIs is it’s very clear whether whether whether it’s happening or not, whether results are taking place. The other thing too, is I would look at and again. Playing devil’s advocate, right? Why is that important? So if you’re thinking about, oh, yeah, I have my VA welcome people into your Facebook group. Why is that important? What result is that creating? And then how are you able to you’re able to very clearly measure a KPI based on welcoming new people into the Facebook group because you can say, yeah, they get that the new person gets a welcome within 12 hours of them joining. 

Either they do or they don’t. But I would also look at even go deeper. And this would take a lot more, you know, deeper insight and thought is what effect is welcoming new people into the Facebook group within 12 hours. What effect does that having? How is that affecting whatever the Facebook group is there for? Right. Is it? Creating more engagement, etc., etc.. Another KPI. So they said sends out messages, reminders to watch a webinar. Right? So all a metric is all weekly reminders are sent out according to the scope of that specific project. So did the reminders get sent out? Again, that sounds very simple, but that’s really a metric that you can have there. And again, why is it important? And did it happen or not? With creating social media graphics. And assets. So a KPI could be all social media graphics and assets are completed within agreed upon timelines. So what are the timelines? Maybe there’s a project management. Tool or whoever, whomever is is managing this that side of the project. Are the graphics and assets being created? Before the deadlines again, very clear. Yes or no. And the key here, as you can see with each of these, these are just random examples I’m sharing with you. But the key here is that they’re all measurable. 

Right. We are hiring an executive assistant for me in my business. One of the. One of the tasks. One of the responsibilities. Is ensuring that all calendar events have appropriate links. Right. Sounds very basic. But those those types of things are easy to to miss. So if I have a podcast interview to do with somebody else is the link that I need to go to at that time in the calendar event. And so that could be measured by the number of times I go into an event. And if it’s not there, then it’s like, okay, we’re keeping track of that, right? Another one might be if this role is responsible for creating the weekly team meeting agenda and then adding it to the calendar. And that is due by whatever date. Well, is it happening or is it not? You know, another one might be all of emails are responded to, all emails or responded to within 24 business hours or 24 hours. Again. It’s either happening or it’s not. In, especially if you’re using a tool like Help Scout, which is what we use in our business for customer service. You can measure that stuff, right? And so my point here is that there’s always a way to find a number to create a KPI for each role in your business. Each role is going to is often going to have multiple KPIs. Now you don’t want like eight, nine, ten, 11, 15 KPIs, but a few core KPIs that each role is responsible for. 

But again, don’t just make them up for the heck of it. You want to make sure that the KPIs are based on results that are moving the business forward. So that’s the first thing that you want to get clarity on before you go into any of the KPIs. So ah, my friend, hope this was helpful for you. This is a big topic that comes up all of the time and I’m going to be talking a lot more. You can hear my daughter Maya in the background. She just go home from preschool. And this is a big topic that I’ll be talking a lot more about in terms of role, responsibility and the results that people on your team are responsible for. Because we often have like, oh, this person’s doing this, but why? We want to be really clear on that. We want to be really intentional with that. And then once you have that clarity, then you can start creating the KPIs. All right, friend, thank you for tuning in today. As always, make sure that you hit that subscribe button on or the follow up or the follow button on whatever platform that you listen to the show on so you don’t miss any episodes. I appreciate you. Thank you, as always, for tuning in today and coming to hang out with me. Until next time, be well, my friend. I’ll talk to you soon.