Tracking your business success is an important part of any entrepreneur’s life. There are many ways to measure it, but there is no one right way, so you may need a little help in the beginning. But once you’ve got some experience under your belt and have figured out what metrics work best for you, then tracking will become second nature and be something that will enable you to make good decisions about where your efforts should go next.
Let’s go through some of the best ways you can measure how well you’re doing with your business.
- Track sales by month: You can measure how well you’re doing by tracking your monthly sales and breaking it down to how much of that is from online orders instead of in-person transactions. If you find yourself needing more time on the floor talking with customers, then consider adding a way for them to order online or maybe even have an associate manage those duties so you can focus on what’s important: growing the company.
- Calculate ROI (return on investment): If all your revenue isn’t going towards expenses, then measuring how much profit comes from each dollar spent will tell you how well your business is doing financially. Be sure to track all the expenditures, not just how much money goes into costs of goods sold or how much gets allocated to marketing spending. This number will often fluctuate depending on what stage your company is in, so it’s important that this metric be updated regularly. You can also calculate your financial ratio of how much equity was contributed to the company and how much has been paid out in dividends.
- Conduct customer surveys: When your business is still new, there may not be many opportunities for feedback from current clients yet – but when they do come up (for example, if someone contacts support), take advantage of it! Ask about how their experience was and make sure they know how important constructive criticism is at this stage.
- Record how much work each team member is doing on a project: This can help new entrepreneurs see how well they’ve been delegating or whether certain people are carrying more weight than others. It’s important that everyone feels equally engaged with what’s going on so that there aren’t any feelings of being undervalued or overlooked.
- Find out why clients leave: If you’re having trouble retaining customers, it’s up to you to figure out how to fix this issue before it becomes too big – which means finding out as quickly as possible what went wrong and addressing it. Moreover, how you handle the situation once it’s happened is just as significant. That means how quickly and how well you work to get them back on board or how much they are satisfied with how they were treated.
- Measure your customer satisfaction: This can be achieved through surveys, reviews, feedback forms offered at checkout, etc. It will help keep track of how people feel about what you’re doing so that when any changes need made, there will be some solid evidence backing up what needs changing. Measures like this prevent a lot of wasted time and money trying new things that aren’t working out for customers.
- Number of customers served: track this metric by looking at how many people are coming through your doors for any kind of service or product you offer. Your customer acquisition rate, also called a conversion rate, is how many new people come into your store per every hundred visits it receives, whether they’re buying something or not. You can find metrics like these on Google Analytics, so be sure to set up an account before you start collecting data with them. They will show you how well lead generation campaigns work and where traffic comes from, which will help guide decisions about marketing spending too.
- Measure success according to how many people are subscribed: Tracking the numbers of subscriptions can let you know if there has been an increase over time which could mean customers are happy with what they’re getting from your product and want more! The caveat here, though, is that a decrease may also be due to changes within the industry (or products) rather than dissatisfaction with current offerings.
- Focus on your strengths as a business owner: The best entrepreneurs focus on the things they’re good at rather than trying to be experts in everything. This is how they can achieve success without getting too overwhelmed – which leaves them better able to handle any challenges that come up along the way.
- Look at how many times new clients are coming back for more: It’s great when people come once or twice, but if they continue to return again and again, then this means something else must be happening to keep their interest peaked – which could mean a great opportunity waiting around the corner! Keep these numbers up by asking them what they liked best about working with you so that you can replicate those things every single time someone comes through the door.
- Track how much your employees are learning: It’s common for people to feel like they’re stagnating in their careers, but there is a way you can help them. Track how many hours one of your team members has spent on training and development activities so that they know how seriously the company considers continual growth.
- Record what works best for each customer type: This will give you an understanding of which customers need more care than others and how to spend your time accordingly with those clients who require more attention. In this process, think about how well different marketing campaigns have worked or even just talking to customers themselves – it might be that some would prefer social media while others want email newsletters instead. You’ll never know unless you ask!
- Measure how profitable your company is: When you’re starting out, it’s important to know whether or not customers are spending money on the products and services that you offer. It also pays off in the long run because this will help you figure out how much of an investment (in time, materials, etc.) to put into marketing efforts.
- Track how much time customers stay on your website: If you don’t know how long people are spending browsing around, then it’s hard to figure out how successful marketing campaigns have been. And if the wait is too high for potential clients to tolerate, that can lead to many lost business opportunities.
- Figure number of new markets your company has entered in last year: It’s important not only to keep track of how well things are going with current products and services but also how easy it might be to expand into other areas. This will help pinpoint what strengths your company currently possesses so that these qualities can be used wisely when considering future growth options.
Conclusion:
Measuring your business success is an important part of how you grow your company. You need to know how profitable a marketing campaign has been, how many new markets the company entered last year, and how well different products or services are doing to make good decisions about where your efforts should go next.
Danis Woods in Businessman, investment banker and stock exchange traders. On the same time he loves writing financial blogs to shed lights on different aspects that new and existing businessman are not aware of.
R Amin says
Very nice article. It will help to other people.