Archive for June, 2010

Business management by the numbers. As a business owner, your company’s numbers are talking to you everyday. Are you listening? I know, you are probably going to tell me you are too busy to fuss over ‘the numbers’. And you might also tell me that if you are staying ‘busy’ then the numbers will take care of themselves. Really? Your business success is all about paying attention to and acting on relevant numbers. But are you paying attention to the right numbers? I’m not talking about cash flow or your P&L (that’s another day!). Today is paying attention to the basic numbers of your daily activity. How do you track that? Your ability to select and focus on improving them is the key to your success.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

1. List 3 ways that you generate prospects – how could you generate more? Once you find your prospect, what percentage convert to becoming clients?

2. What is your sales process (you do have a process, right?)? How long is your sales cycle?

3. What is the average dollar amount of your sale?

4. How many prospects do you have in your ‘pipeline’ today?

The answers to these questions help you to forecast your sales each month. The more accurate your answers, the more accurate your forecast will be.

You may tell me this is fairly elementary stuff. But would you really be surprised to know that many business owners never take the time to go through a process like this?

Have you done this recently? Take the time today and let me know what you found out!