With a bit of fall in the air and football season close enough to be excited, I wanted to kick off the day with an interesting and inspiring data story, especially for the sports fans.
People know Pat Tillman, rightfully, for his military service and sacrifice. Fewer people know how interesting his football background actually was before that.
Despite being named one of the top high school players in the state of California, Tillman’s measurable didn’t jump off the page. His height, weight, speed, agility times…none of it screamed future star. As a result, he went very much overlooked and only received three scholarship offers: Arizona State, BYU and San Jose State. He went on to Arizona State, and even though he was one of the best players in the country in his final season, he still was not selected until the seventh round of the NFL draft, for the same reason; his physical numbers on the page just did not appear to be the type of player to translate to the NFL. You had to physically see Pat play and witness it for yourself. The ferocity that he hit with, his omnipresence on the field, the way he lifted the team and achieved the desired result; the traits that don’t show up on paper.
When he got to the NFL, he was a solid producer, but he was still on just a one-year contract with the Arizona Cardinals and largely an unknown name around the league.
All that changed before the 2000 season, when a Sports Illustrated analyst named Dr. Z used a unique dataset to isolate the right variables and determine a player’s actual value, not just the traditional measurables teams had leaned on for decades. Z’s model concluded that Pat Tillman was not only good, but he was the best in the entire NFL at his position…and it wasn’t close. Dr. Z published his reaction as “What shocked me was the margin by which he was superior…he is clearly the best in the NFL at his position.” Only then did teams come calling, including the St. Louis Rams, who offered him more than double his pay from the Cardinals. For better or worse, Pat was loyal and remained with the Cards, but I’m assuming there were some contract renegotiations.
Tillman obviously left a legacy far more significant than being a standout NFL player. But his football career is still a great example of something I often think and have seen in sales and in quantitative measures of performance. The right data, used the right way, can reveal real value that the obvious, surface level numbers completely miss.
A few examples of revealing metrics that are rarely measured:
Revenue per Inbound Lead: (the result here may surprise you…who’s really crushing with what they have to work with and who is driving your customer acquistion cost up)
Dollars per Hour: Who on your outbound team is producing relative to their time on the clock. This is especially useful for hourly, outbound employees.
Growth Rate Percentage (Territory or Book of Business): Who’s really building their territory, vs. who is turning and burning.
Top line alone doesn’t tell the entire story and you may find sometimes the top performers are hiding in plain sight. It just takes someone willing to look past the conventional scouting report.