10 Traits of Successful Entrepreneurs by Kevin Sudbury - HTML preview

Trait 7: Entrepreneurs Make Data-Driven Decisions

You may get “gut feelings” sometimes. Maybe you occasionally make decisions based on these hunches. But when it comes to business, successful entrepreneurs make decisions about their business based on their research and data.

Let’s take advertising as an example…

Some business owners take out ads in certain venues because it’s hip and cool for businesses in their niche to place ads on these sites or in these publications. These business owners never track and test their advertising, so they have no idea about their return on investment. Maybe they don’t even realize that their advertisements in this one venue are essentially a huge waste of money because it’s not bringing in any traffic, and certainly the ads aren’t bringing in any subscribers or sales.

In other cases, business owners may lie to themselves. They may suspect that they’re not getting good results from their advertising, but they tell this lie: “This advertising is for brand-building. So it doesn’t matter if we’re not getting subscribers or sales from it.”

That sort of attitude is fine if you’re engaging in a hobby. But if you’re building a serious business, then you need to base your decisions on data and research.

Here are examples of cases where you need to make data-driven decisions, rather than guessing or making “gut feeling” decisions:

• Business ideas. Sure, brainstorming is cool. You’re bound to come up with some awesome business ideas. You might even have friends who tell you, “Wow, that’s an amazing idea! You’re gonna make a mint!” But don’t get swept away in all the excitement and emotion. You need to first check the viability of a business idea by doing your market research. If you don’t, you’re just shooting in the dark and increasing your risk.
• Product ideas. Same thing applies here as for business ideas – you need to do your research to check if there’s a market who’s eager and willing to buy a specific product or service. Then you need to do additional research to figure out how to “build a better mousetrap” (i.e., create a product that’s better than the competition).
• Ad campaigns. As mentioned above, you shouldn’t guess about which ads, venues and campaigns work. Instead, you should base your advertising decisions on your testing, so that you’re investing your ad dollars wisely.
• Direct-response pages and emails. You should be tracking and testing your lead pages, sales pages and other direct-response pages, as well as your emails, so see which versions get you the best results.
• Branding. Your branding shouldn’t be built on what you think is cool. It should be designed based on market research. Once you find out what your market values, then you can create a brand identity (including a unique selling position) that separates you from the competition and attracts your market.

Those are just a few examples of when you should make decisions based on data and research. The bottom line here is if it’s possible to collect data, you should do so before making a related decision.

Now let’s take a look at the eighth trait of successful people…