Exploring KPI as a leading indicator of success
Understand KPIs and leading indicators with Nate Matherson. Learn how to measure and drive business success in this essential guide.
Welcome to the Smooth Operators' Guide, our fresh series where we dive deep with top-notch – CTOs, CEOs, CMOs, and CROs – to spill the beans on the apps they use for running their businesses. These sessions are pure gold, full of best practices straight from the leaders themselves.
Guess who's on deck for this week? Nate Matherson, the powerhouse CEO and co-founder at Positional!
Tell us a little about yourself. Introduce yourself to our audience; talk about your current role, when you started Positional, and why.
Hey folks! I'm Nate Matherson. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Positional, living that startup life for a solid decade. We kicked off Positional back in February '23, out of a pivot from a previous company.
At Positional, we are trying to do a few things:
- Rollup a very fragmented tool space with a single workflow
- Build unique and helpful tools that we've always wanted, but that we just never found a good solution for
- Help content teams improve conversion and better map the steps the user takes during their buyer journey
What growth verticals or channels are you bullish on and why?
Content and SEO, of course!
Just kidding (sorry I had to). Over the past year, two channels have pleasantly surprised me: our weekly SEO podcast and repurposing content on LinkedIn.
Our focus is on building credibility and boosting traffic through our inbound strategy. SEO-driven content takes time to blossom, so we're hustling to extend its reach to other channels, accelerating traffic and pipeline growth in the interim.
What does your stack look like and what are your go-to tools for running your day-to-day?
On the GTM side of things?
Positional, of course, for tracking the success of our organic traffic, keywords, user experience metrics, and buyer journeys.
For internal communication, we're all about Slack. When it comes to podcasting, we use Riverside for recording and Transistor for publishing. Managing our email newsletter is a breeze with MailChimp, and Webflow serves as our CMS.
Handling outbound tasks is made easy with Apollo, and Streak takes care of our CRM needs. That's how we keep the wheels turning!
What metrics, KPIs, and numbers tell you whether you’re headed the right way?
Right now, the KPI that is a leading indicator of success is: the # of new demos scheduled.
Demos are largely equaling revenue for us right now. So the more demos and calls we can schedule, the more growth and revenue that we can generate.
We also track leading indicators of: new demos scheduled
Metrics like organic search traffic, listening to our podcast, impressions, and engagement on our social posts, open rates on our email newsletter, and CTR on our email newsletter.
Every leader has that one metric that tells the whole story. What’s that one metric for you and why?
Of new demos scheduled!
Rapid fire round. Which tool(s) would you say:
- Is your Swiss army knife:
Positional, of course! Besides that, I know our team enjoys using Apollo and Slack. Slack might seem like a boring answer, but they've added so much functionality over the last year.
- You cannot live without in your stack:
- Undiscovered gem:
Riverside? It might be discovered at this point, but it is a fantastic platform for recording our podcast episodes.
- New to your stack:
What’s one unobvious tactic, tool, or piece of advice that has worked wonders for you?
I generally don't like cold-pinging people on LinkedIn to sell them something. I think the better approach is to connect with them organically, let them see the fantastic content you are creating and sharing (ex podcasts, and blogs), and then after they've been in your universe for 1-2 months, hit them with a message. They will probably be like:
“Great to hear from you! I've seen your content before.”
Nate's mission at Positional is to develop a robust toolset designed to empower content teams in accelerating the growth of their content channels and maximizing organic search traffic. With an appreciation for content marketing and SEO, he is committed to simplifying the content marketing landscape for SEO professionals. Nate spends his daily doing inbound marketing efforts, supporting his customers engaging with them on Slack and staying active on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Before joining Positional, Nate was the CEO and co-founder at ContainIQ and LendEDU.
Nate’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/NateMatherson
Positional Blog: https://www.positional.com/blog
Positional Newsletter: https://www.positional.com/newsletter
Positional Podcast: https://www.positional.com/podcast
Positional Website: https://www.positional.com/