In business, as in life - the things that get measured, get done.

Whether we are talking about new sales, client meetings, fitness goals or your career progression, you need to keep track of where you started,  where you are heading, and how, each day, you are moving closer to achieving your goal.

If you aren't great at this, then here are some tips to get started.

Start with your current reality.

What’s your baseline? This is what you measure progress against. Refer back to the goals you have set yourself—how are you going to measure your progress?

Make it visual.

Keep yourself accountable, and on track, by keeping your progress chart somewhere you can see and update it daily, weekly or monthly—whatever works for you. By regularly tracking your activity, you will see how you are spending your time, and whether it is effective.

What if your activity isn’t yielding the results you want?

See this as a positive. If you haven’t made progress towards achieving your goal, then obviously you need to change what you are doing—better now than in a year’s time. If you have progressed, then celebrate the win!

The point is, if you don’t track and measure your activity…do you actually know what you are doing?

Here is a quick example.

You need to increase your client numbers, and decide that your most effective strategy is to spend money on advertising campaigns each month. These cost $1,000 each, but it will give you great coverage in the local area.

What should you be tracking in this scenario?

1. First and foremost – know your baseline. If you don’t know the exact number of clients that you have before you start, it will be absolutely impossible for you to measure (or         recognise) any increases.

2. Set your goals – short and long term. Know how many clients you need to attract per month and per year to make the advertising expenditure worth your while. Setting a long         term goal means that you can keep track of the overall picture. Sure you might have slower months, but these things ebb and flow – which is why tracking the trend is so         important.

3. Ask the question. If you are attracting new customers – where did they come from? Are they actually a result of your advertising, or another source?

Without spending the time to track and measure your results, there is every possibility that your efforts to increase your business are working, but it’s equally likely that they are not being effective. Even worse, they could actually be eroding your bottom line.

Imagine if you think it’s working, but after some analysis, realise:

· You have, over the course of 6 months, attracted an average of 3 additional clients per month (18 in total).

· Six of those were word-of-mouth referrals from existing clients, not from your advertising campaign.

· For your $6,000 outlay, the acquisition cost [the cost to get each of those new clients] per client was actually $500.

Depending on your business, this cost of acquiring a new client may be worth it, but for others, you could be losing money every time you spend that $1,000. Imagine what happens if your profit for each client is only $300, yet the acquisition cost is $500? You are effectively losing $200 on each new client and would be better off without them.

The point is - if you aren’t tracking your progress, and you don’t know what success looks like, you could look up in a year to find you have spent $12,000 on advertising that didn’t work!

Key takeaways

• You don’t need to make this complicated. A few measurements that you track on a regular basis are all you need to see whether things are working or not.

• If you are unsure about what to track, it is worth the investment to sit down with someone who can help you put together a scoreboard that measures the right metrics for         your business.

• Think of tracked measurements as a ‘check-up’ for your business. Whether the results are good or bad…if you don’t measure, you don’t know!

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Need more help? I’ve got your back!

Are you in the dark about the health of your business?

Do you need help working out what to track and when?

Not sure what decision to make next?

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If this sounds like you, then let’s get you on track to measure your success!

Click on this link to book in a free discovery chat: https://BookADiscoveryCallWithAlex.as.me/

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