I had the opportunity this week to listen to a very successful entrepreneur from my local area named Bob Johnson. He owns Scratch Bakery in South Portland, Maine and is famous for his incredibly, delicious bagels. People come for miles (many 15-20 miles) and wait in line on a Saturday or Sunday morning to pick up their bagels.
One of the success tips he shared with the group was around measuring where you are in your business, which is one of the things I teach my clients.
It’s not always something I’ve been good at, in fact, in the past it’s clearly one of my big weaknesses. Because it’s not always fun, or pleasant to measure where we are in our business at any given point.
So if you were like me, perhaps you are sticking your head in the sand around how much you are actually bringing in for receivables. Or maybe you know you might be spending a bit too much on your expenses, but you don’t know exactly how much, so you think it’s probably better not to look!
Or perhaps you’ve put a new product or a new promotion in place, or maybe you’ve upgraded your website or Facebook page. But, you aren’t looking at your analytics to see whether any of your investment made a difference or moved the meter.
In order to have a successful business, you must measure a certain number of things on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
Here’s a list of the minimum number of things you need to measure in your business:
1-Receivables–How much money are you bringing in on a daily (yes, I said daily) basis? You must know at the end of every day, before you go home, how much money you brought in that day. This is a must-do daily discipline.
2-Expenses–How much is going out on a daily basis? One could argue to look at expenses on either a daily or a weekly basis (weekly is the minimum). You must know how much is going out on a daily or weekly basis and to whom and where. Expenses can creep up on us, and it’s important to keep on top of them and be sure expenses are justified and well spent dollars.
3-Customer Satisfaction–are your customers happy with your product or service? Do you have a way to measure that satisfaction? Perhaps you don’t have the most sophisticated means in which to measure this, but you must have something in place, a way to communicate with customers on their experience with you, your product or service.
4-Website and Social Media–we are all spending a lot of time and money on our website and social media, but are we measuring what kind of return we’re getting for it? Do you measure how many likes you have, how many people are viewing your website on a weekly basis, what blog is the most popular, what page on your website, do people spend the most time on? What social media is driving the most people to your website? There are lots of things to measure here and you don’t have to do everything. But I would suggest you pick the top 5-6 things that matter most to you and your business and put a system into place to start measuring them and studying the results.
5-Your current growth goals for your business—I’m sure you’ve put some thought into your goals for this year, including how much you’d like to grow in your business. Are you measuring your progress to your goals?
It’s so important to look at these areas of your business and set up a system to measure them on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. I have seen the most transformation amongst my clients who implement a measurement system for their business. It’s amazing to see the growth, progress and success of entrepreneurs who start paying attention to their numbers on a regular basis. And I hope this will include you!
 Mandy works with talented, high energy self employed professionals and very small businesses who struggle to market their business effectively, stretch their capacity and play a bigger game. Mandy’s client’s receive proven, specific information on what they need to do to get more clients and grow their business. As a result, those who coach with Mandy increase their business, get more clients and make more money, faster and easier than they ever would have on their own. Sign up for her free Cd “7 Productivity Secrets of Successful Entrepreneurs” right down below. |