Show Notes
Mario hired a marketing company. They promised: "We'll put your ads out. You won't even have to think about it." And they did. The ads looked great. But they weren't converting into leads.
The problem: They measured the wrong thing.
The company delivered on their promise—ads. But Mario wanted leads. They never actually promised leads. Mario assumed it was implied.
The lesson: If it's not specific, it's not the deliverable. "Ads" is activity. "Leads" is the result. Measure results.
The outbound calls example: "We'll make a thousand outbound calls a day." Great. How many leads? "We can't guarantee leads." Same trap.
Scott's corporate story (No Rev 7): At a Fortune 300 rental car company, there was a report tracking cars with no revenue in 7 days. The intent was to flag broken, lost, or stolen cars—or overfleeting. But locations started gaming it. They'd swap cars just to avoid appearing on the report. The company incurred costs to move stuff around so they didn't show up on a report.
The principle: When you measure the wrong thing, you take actions that manipulate the data.
The Variability Trap callback: Two employees can do the same work with completely different results. If you don't define what "done" looks like, you get inconsistency.
The fix: Be specific. Not just "leads"—qualified leads. Not just "ads"—ads that convert. Define what success truly looks like.
Got a business question? Ask Scott here: scotttodd.net/ask
📜 Full Transcript (Click to expand)
Scott Todd (00:00)
Let me tell about Mario. He hired a marketing company who promised him, We will put your ads out. And he was like, Thank you. And they told him, You won't even have to think about it. And he's like, even better. And that's where Mario's problem began. Welcome to Fix My Business, the show that helps you fix your business.
I'm Scott Todd and I have built multiple seven-figure businesses after leaving corporate America. And I want to help you build a business that you love. And that's where Mario's story comes into play. I met Mario last week. And Mario approached me and he was telling me about this story where he hired this marketing company who basically promised him, hey, listen, you're not even gonna have to think about marketing. We're just gonna get your ads out there.
Everything's going to be fantastic. Don't even worry about it. This is the stress-free way to marketing. And he bought it. He he believed it. And I'm not saying that the company misled him. And Mario told me that in fact they did put ads out there. They were pumping ads out there like crazy. And he would look at the ads and he's thinking, like, this looks good. Like this is great. This is better than I could produce. The problem.
Is that they were putting ads out there, but the ads were not converting into leads. They weren't, they weren't performing. And so many times, entrepreneurs, they kind of like they they have this problem in their business and they can't stand this one thing. And they're like, please, will someone give me relief on this thing? And someone comes along and says, I'll take care of that for you. And you're like, that's fantastic, but then they measure the wrong thing.
The marketing company was delivering on their promises. They were putting ads out there. They never promised him that they would generate leads. They never said that. Okay. Even he said when I asked him, like, did they tell you that they would put ads out there or did they tell you that they would generate leads? He's like, we never talked about leads. I believed through that it was implied that the ads would convert to leads. But they didn't. They weren't. That.
Ads were the activity, but the result that he wanted was the leads. And I've seen this in other situations. I've had people that have come to me, companies that have come to me, and they're like, hey, you know, we will do all of these outbound calls for you every day. We'll, we'll, we'll make a thousand outbound calls for you a day. Okay, great. That's that's fantastic. That sounds dreamy.
But how many leads are you going give me? well, we can't guarantee leads. there you go. You see, like it's the wrong metric. And if you measure the wrong metric, then what happens is you start to go down this rabbit hole. And ultimately, at the end of the day, you're not getting what you want. And again, I'm not saying that the company misled him because I think that they were very honest in what they said. We will put the ads out there.
And as I talked to Mario, what Mario began to realize is that, hey, look, maybe I maybe I wasn't clear of what I wanted, right? Like maybe I wasn't clear of what that expectation was. And I think that so many times that's what happens with with all of us is that we have this understanding that something might be implied. But if it's not specific that that's the deliverable, then the implication isn't there.
The implication that leads would come from ads just isn't there. And I I told Mario, I said, you know, what you gotta, what you gotta be able to do is you gotta be able to go back to the company and say, hey, listen, you pumping leads out or ads out is not solving the problem. You're not generating leads. And we need to look at the measurability of what we want. So that's basically what he was gonna go off and do. But it really made me stop and think about all of the
the situations in which we give false metric to things. And when I was at my corporate 300 job, which was with a rental car company, you could see this play out because the management team would put out some metric of something that they were going to measure. And then the teams in the field, the execution would go and they would, they would
Work to that number. Let me give you an example. In rental car, or at least the company that I worked for, there was this metric that was called the No Rev 7 and the Ro No Rev 14. These were two separate reports that ran, I think, weekly. And the thing is, is that when a car appeared on the no rev seven, it meant that there was no revenue on that car in seven days.
Now, the original intent of that number as I understood it as a as a leader of the company was that the operations would take that number and they would do two things with it. Number one, if a car had not had revenue in seven days, then there might be a problem with the car. Is it in the repair? Is it in the repair, getting repaired? Is it getting you know in the repair shop? Is it a maintenance issue?
is the car lost? Has it been stolen? Like that happens. That that's real. It happens. Okay. So the intent was to go into physically touch the car. Like, I've got it. It's here's the situation with it. And you were n the the original intent was never that you would be measured by it. I mean, you were going to be measured by it. How many cars are on your no rep seven? But at the same time, it was really meant as a
Alert system. Like there's a problem here. The no Rev 14 was the same thing. No revenue in 14 days. Now, when you look at these two reports together, if you looked at the trend, what's happening here is it could also indicate that there was more cars at that location than what was needed. That the cars were overfleeted, that the location was overfleeted. Now, from a management and from an execution point, there were always times in which you would
want to have a car or cars overfleeted. For example, for example, if if a big event was coming up in a in a city, like let's say the Super Bowl, well you just can't move all of these cars in at one time. You have to build them up and bring them in so that they appear and they're ready to be rented on the the day of the event. Right. So there's times in which you might be overfleeted, but generally these reports were meant to do two things. Being
Early indicator that you were overfleeted, but also that there could potentially be a problem with the cars. Well, what happened was the locations realizing that they were going to be judged on these things, they started kind of manipulating the data. And again, I'm not saying this in a bad way. I'm just telling you how this plays out. So what happened was, in order to avoid being on these reports, they would take the NOREV 7.
Report, which was like that early indicator. And then what they would do is they would begin to swap cars out. So if this car was on like the no rev seven report, then what they would do is they would tell someone in the transport group, hey, move this to the rent line and take a car that's on the rent line and move it back over here. So now what you had was you had people that were moving cars around just to avoid being on a report.
Think about that one for a minute. Now the company was incurring costs just to move stuff around so that they didn't show up on a report. Now, look, I'm not saying that's right. That is definitely not right. Right? Like that is definitely not the right thing to do from an operation standpoint. But this is where metrics matter. Because when you start to measure the wrong thing in the wrong way, then what happens is you begin to take ac actions and activities.
That manipulate the data. And this can happen too when we go back to our marketing example, where when you start to tell your marketing company, well, we need leads or we want ads, a certain number of ads a day, you will get the certain number of ads a day, but you may not get the leads. Now, when you go to measure the leads,
That's also somewhat of an easy thing to manipulate. You might say, how is it easy to manipulate leads? Well, if you're promising the moon and you can't on something you can't deliver, that still generates a lead, right? So it's not just about I want X amount of leads. It's about, hey, I need these leads to be qualified. I need them to be people that actually want what I have, not something that's made up in a pipe dream, too.
Right. So this is the specificity that we want to get to when we're talking about these numbers, is that what does success truly look like? I talk about this with the variability trap. You can go back to one of the the older episodes where I talk about the variability trap. And this is where people deliver the same result or they deliver results in different ways. So two different employees might do the same type of work.
But the results are night and day differently. It could be quality, it could be deliverability, it could be so many different ways in there. But see, that is the challenge that Mario and a lot of you might be facing is that you work with a company that's measuring and saying, hey, I'll put these ads out there. But then you're not getting the results that you truly want, which is leads. And not just any lead, qualified leads. So that's kind of the conversation that I had with Mario.
I hope that that helps you. And if you have a business question, head over to scott Todd.net forward slash ask. Get your question submitted, and I will see you in our next episode.
Let me tell about Mario. He hired a marketing company who promised him, We will put your ads out. And he was like, Thank you. And they told him, You won't even have to think about it. And he's like, even better. And that's where Mario's problem began. Welcome to Fix My Business, the show that helps you fix your business.
I'm Scott Todd and I have built multiple seven-figure businesses after leaving corporate America. And I want to help you build a business that you love. And that's where Mario's story comes into play. I met Mario last week. And Mario approached me and he was telling me about this story where he hired this marketing company who basically promised him, hey, listen, you're not even gonna have to think about marketing. We're just gonna get your ads out there.
Everything's going to be fantastic. Don't even worry about it. This is the stress-free way to marketing. And he bought it. He he believed it. And I'm not saying that the company misled him. And Mario told me that in fact they did put ads out there. They were pumping ads out there like crazy. And he would look at the ads and he's thinking, like, this looks good. Like this is great. This is better than I could produce. The problem.
Is that they were putting ads out there, but the ads were not converting into leads. They weren't, they weren't performing. And so many times, entrepreneurs, they kind of like they they have this problem in their business and they can't stand this one thing. And they're like, please, will someone give me relief on this thing? And someone comes along and says, I'll take care of that for you. And you're like, that's fantastic, but then they measure the wrong thing.
The marketing company was delivering on their promises. They were putting ads out there. They never promised him that they would generate leads. They never said that. Okay. Even he said when I asked him, like, did they tell you that they would put ads out there or did they tell you that they would generate leads? He's like, we never talked about leads. I believed through that it was implied that the ads would convert to leads. But they didn't. They weren't. That.
Ads were the activity, but the result that he wanted was the leads. And I've seen this in other situations. I've had people that have come to me, companies that have come to me, and they're like, hey, you know, we will do all of these outbound calls for you every day. We'll, we'll, we'll make a thousand outbound calls for you a day. Okay, great. That's that's fantastic. That sounds dreamy.
But how many leads are you going give me? well, we can't guarantee leads. there you go. You see, like it's the wrong metric. And if you measure the wrong metric, then what happens is you start to go down this rabbit hole. And ultimately, at the end of the day, you're not getting what you want. And again, I'm not saying that the company misled him because I think that they were very honest in what they said. We will put the ads out there.
And as I talked to Mario, what Mario began to realize is that, hey, look, maybe I maybe I wasn't clear of what I wanted, right? Like maybe I wasn't clear of what that expectation was. And I think that so many times that's what happens with with all of us is that we have this understanding that something might be implied. But if it's not specific that that's the deliverable, then the implication isn't there.
The implication that leads would come from ads just isn't there. And I I told Mario, I said, you know, what you gotta, what you gotta be able to do is you gotta be able to go back to the company and say, hey, listen, you pumping leads out or ads out is not solving the problem. You're not generating leads. And we need to look at the measurability of what we want. So that's basically what he was gonna go off and do. But it really made me stop and think about all of the
the situations in which we give false metric to things. And when I was at my corporate 300 job, which was with a rental car company, you could see this play out because the management team would put out some metric of something that they were going to measure. And then the teams in the field, the execution would go and they would, they would
Work to that number. Let me give you an example. In rental car, or at least the company that I worked for, there was this metric that was called the No Rev 7 and the Ro No Rev 14. These were two separate reports that ran, I think, weekly. And the thing is, is that when a car appeared on the no rev seven, it meant that there was no revenue on that car in seven days.
Now, the original intent of that number as I understood it as a as a leader of the company was that the operations would take that number and they would do two things with it. Number one, if a car had not had revenue in seven days, then there might be a problem with the car. Is it in the repair? Is it in the repair, getting repaired? Is it getting you know in the repair shop? Is it a maintenance issue?
is the car lost? Has it been stolen? Like that happens. That that's real. It happens. Okay. So the intent was to go into physically touch the car. Like, I've got it. It's here's the situation with it. And you were n the the original intent was never that you would be measured by it. I mean, you were going to be measured by it. How many cars are on your no rep seven? But at the same time, it was really meant as a
Alert system. Like there's a problem here. The no Rev 14 was the same thing. No revenue in 14 days. Now, when you look at these two reports together, if you looked at the trend, what's happening here is it could also indicate that there was more cars at that location than what was needed. That the cars were overfleeted, that the location was overfleeted. Now, from a management and from an execution point, there were always times in which you would
want to have a car or cars overfleeted. For example, for example, if if a big event was coming up in a in a city, like let's say the Super Bowl, well you just can't move all of these cars in at one time. You have to build them up and bring them in so that they appear and they're ready to be rented on the the day of the event. Right. So there's times in which you might be overfleeted, but generally these reports were meant to do two things. Being
Early indicator that you were overfleeted, but also that there could potentially be a problem with the cars. Well, what happened was the locations realizing that they were going to be judged on these things, they started kind of manipulating the data. And again, I'm not saying this in a bad way. I'm just telling you how this plays out. So what happened was, in order to avoid being on these reports, they would take the NOREV 7.
Report, which was like that early indicator. And then what they would do is they would begin to swap cars out. So if this car was on like the no rev seven report, then what they would do is they would tell someone in the transport group, hey, move this to the rent line and take a car that's on the rent line and move it back over here. So now what you had was you had people that were moving cars around just to avoid being on a report.
Think about that one for a minute. Now the company was incurring costs just to move stuff around so that they didn't show up on a report. Now, look, I'm not saying that's right. That is definitely not right. Right? Like that is definitely not the right thing to do from an operation standpoint. But this is where metrics matter. Because when you start to measure the wrong thing in the wrong way, then what happens is you begin to take ac actions and activities.
That manipulate the data. And this can happen too when we go back to our marketing example, where when you start to tell your marketing company, well, we need leads or we want ads, a certain number of ads a day, you will get the certain number of ads a day, but you may not get the leads. Now, when you go to measure the leads,
That's also somewhat of an easy thing to manipulate. You might say, how is it easy to manipulate leads? Well, if you're promising the moon and you can't on something you can't deliver, that still generates a lead, right? So it's not just about I want X amount of leads. It's about, hey, I need these leads to be qualified. I need them to be people that actually want what I have, not something that's made up in a pipe dream, too.
Right. So this is the specificity that we want to get to when we're talking about these numbers, is that what does success truly look like? I talk about this with the variability trap. You can go back to one of the the older episodes where I talk about the variability trap. And this is where people deliver the same result or they deliver results in different ways. So two different employees might do the same type of work.
But the results are night and day differently. It could be quality, it could be deliverability, it could be so many different ways in there. But see, that is the challenge that Mario and a lot of you might be facing is that you work with a company that's measuring and saying, hey, I'll put these ads out there. But then you're not getting the results that you truly want, which is leads. And not just any lead, qualified leads. So that's kind of the conversation that I had with Mario.
I hope that that helps you. And if you have a business question, head over to scott Todd.net forward slash ask. Get your question submitted, and I will see you in our next episode.