Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Tracking your progress.


As a small business owner and business coach, I am busy and I mean real busy. I try to juggle two businesses, family, friends, ministry and more. There are never enough hours in everyday. Don’t get me wrong, I love it. I get meet so many people and everyday is a different adventure. Some days I sit back in the evening and reflect and think, I sure was busy but was I busy doing things right or busy doing the right things. I tend to loose focus from time to time and become reactive to my environment instead of proactive.

I have found that if I set some measurable goals that are in writing and keep them within view all the time, I deliver better results. With our tooling business, it is all about sales dollars and sales volume. The margins are set and do not change nor do our expenses. On the other hand, with our business coaching there are several revenue streams that compete for our attention with differing margins and investments of time and networking and this causes conflicts for us at times. I still keep track of daily progress associated with sales volume and expenses. If this is difficult as an owner, how do you think it is for your team?  We have worked to develop some Keep Performance Indicators (KPI) for each team member and we review them regularly. They say you cant expect, what your don’t inspect. We track a lot of things but keep our eyes on only a few key indicators. Each day we begin with the end in mind. Our goal is to grow repeatable sales, profitably and long-term. We then tie our actions to our goals and measure the outcome. More sales calls over time results in better relationships and opportunities to serve. We know we can’t sell people any service or product they don’t need. As we get to know clients and understand their needs, we then can customize and adapt our products and service to meet these needs if the fit is right. The following is a list of items I gathered from a new book by Mark Thompson and Brian Tracy called Now … Build a Great Business. Pick three or four of these items and track your progress and watch your company grow in the areas that are strategic to you:

1) Sales of all products from all sources (your top line)
2) Other revenues of all kinds (nonsales activities)
3) Cost of goods sold (all inclusive)
4) Expenses (every cost of doing business)
5) Salaries and wages ( usually the biggest single expense)
6) Lead generation (number and cost per lead)
7) Conversion rate from lead generation
8) Cost of customer acquisition
9) Average size of a sale
10) Average gross profit per sale
11) Average gross profit margin as a percentage
12) Average net profit per sale for each product or service
13) Average cost per sale (specific total cost per product)
14) Average number of times a customer buys
15) lifetime value of a customer
16) sales per employee (average)
17) Sales per day, week, month, or even hour
18) Sale per specific product or service
19) Average size of up-sells or cross sales
20) Average number of referrals received
21) Average sales per square foot (retail)
22) ROI (return on money invested and working in the business)
23) ROE (return on owner’s equity in the business)
24) ROS (return on sales, or net profit from sales after all expenses
25) Amount of receivables and how long outstanding
26) Amount of payable and when due
27) Amount of money in the bank
28) Amount of money drawn down on credit lines
29) Amount of debt in total owed by the business
30) General trend of key numbers
31) Number of order for future fulfillment
32) Number and size of bed debts and past-due payments
33) Daily active users of your website, your services, your products.

1 comment:

  1. Although its different to life coaching but it does touch some personal issues and personality traits since they play a vital role in eliminating the hurdles in the way of your dream job. self development

    ReplyDelete