Chapter 2 – Financial Control – Rule your money
This is part of the ‘How to’ coaching series. An ongoing series of activities to make your business successful. Follow it step by step and see positive results as you develop a robust business model, set on a solid foundation.
Activity 14 – I regularly measure my sales, customers, and money statistics
Lies, damn lies, and statistics, as the saying goes.
Well, properly recorded and understood statistics are useful in determining where you are with your business.
Are you recording the results of your efforts in running your business? If not, how do you know if you are doing better, or worse, than last week, month, year?
There are many ways to measure your statistics. It can be a bit daunting, especially if you try to measure everything. That’s when statistics become a nightmare.
Why would you need to measure your sales, customers and money? Typically, by knowing a few facts about what you are achieving will help you understand where your business is now, and what you will need to do to get it to where you want it to be.
Some example statistics: (this is not an exhaustive list)
For Sales – how many products have you sold per given sale, or how many per given time. The profit margins of each product, or service.
For Customers – how many customers for any given time period. How much spend per customer. The type of purchases. How many times a customer makes a purchase.
For Money – what are your most profitable products/services. Time taken to realise a sale verses stock purchase.
The ‘How to’ bit:
Keep things simple and define what you need to measure.
Use a simple way to record the statistics you want, such as on a spreadsheet. More complex tools are available when you have the capacity to make use of the more detailed information.
Regularly review the information to analyse the trends. Make a change to your way of operating and see if it has a positive impact.
If you would like help defining and implementing your statistics processes, follow this link and Contact Us…