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Did You Make a Profit or a Loss? The first, and most important, question to answer is this: what does your balance sheet look like? You need to honestly add up all the numbers -- don't be tempted to add on money that you think you're a few days from getting, or take away bad purchases that proved useful in your personal life, for example. Hopefully you kept electronic records, so this shouldn't be too much trouble. Once you know how you did, you need to look at how to do better. If you made a loss (as almost everyone does in their first year), what can you do about it? Where did the money go? If you made a profit then, well, congratulations! But you still need to think about how much of your profit to re-invest in the business, and how you can increase your profits next year. Remember that money makes money: once you're making a profit, wise investment can make it grow exponentially. How Many Customers Did You Get? Now, take a look at your customer database. What's the total number of people who dealt with you this year? How many is that per day, and how much did each one spend? Once you have this information, you can work out how much customers were paying you overall weekly, daily or even hourly. If it seems like a lot more than you saw, you need to ask yourself if you spent too much of their money on expenses. If it seems like hardly anything, then you're in trouble. Sorry to be blunt, but either you need to consider raising your prices, or you're just not doing enough marketing or working hard enough. How Many Came Back? Of course, a more important metric than the total number of customers you had last year is how many of them came back more than once. Work out what percentage of your business that was repeat business -- note that this means you count someone twice if they bought from you three times overall, three times if they bought from you four, and so on. An easy way to do this is to simply take your number that says how many times a customer has dealt with you, subtract one from all of them, and then add it up. Once you know the raw amount of repeat business, you need to divide it by your total number of customers and then multiply by 100. This gives you a percentage. If your repeat business is lower than 20% or so of your total business, this is cause for concern. Are you doing enough to stay in touch with your existing customers? What Did Customer Complaints Say? I hope you kept hold of every customer complaint you got, even if you fixed it at the time. You need to take a good look over what you did right, what you did wrong and what you messed up. I know you dealt with things as they came up, but looking back over everything can help you to see the big picture. It's all too easy to miss quite simple patterns when you're in the thick of it day-to-day, and looking at the complaints can reveal a trend that you weren't expecting. What Have You Learned?
It can be useful to write yourself out a list of lessons at the end of the year, even if it's things like 'quarter-page magazine ads are just as effective as half-page ones' or 'make lunch later in the day so you eat it faster'. Your accumulated knowledge is valuable: you've paid for it in cash and in sweat, so make sure you don't forget it. See if you can come up with a list of positive things to do next year to make your business even better! |
More Articles:1. Few Things Are More Destructive Than An Insecure Boss By Ramon Greenwood Few things are more destructive to a career than a boss who is insecure. Unfortunately, it is a near certainty that most people will encounter one or more such persons along the way.“The actions of an insecure boss will eventually create an insecure organization, riddled with anxiety and indecision,” says Ramon Greenwood, senior career counselor at Common Sense At Work.com. “People will spend more time looking over their shoulders than looking ahead. Good defenses become more important th… 2. Turbo Charge Your Career With The Most Powerful Leadership Tool Of All: The Leadership Talk. (Part Two) PERMISSION TO REPUBLISH: This article may be republished in newsletters and on web sites provided attribution is provided to the author, and it appears with the included copyright, resource box and live web site link. Email notice of intent to publish is appreciated but not required: mail to: brent@actionleadership.comWord count: 578Summary: The author asserts that presentations and speeches are the least effective means of leadership communication. There is a much more effective way: the Leader… 3. Bullying and the Not for Profit Organisation By Philip Lye Where there is people there is politics! Bullying is now a major workplace issue that has invaded our not for profit organisations. Take the following example.Cheryl was the General Manager of a Not for Profit organisation in a major Australian City providing specialist supervision for young adults. She had recently received complaints of intimidation and harassment against a supervisor by an employee.Imagine her surprise when within a week she received 3 more complaints from 3 other employee… 4. Quick Quiz: Helping Others with Leadership Skill Development Oftentimes a quiz can be an effective learning device. For that reason consider the following questions and see what you learn. Hopefully a few questions will inspire you in the direction of improved management and leadership skill development. The answers are at the bottom of the column, but please resist the temptation to peak until you have given some serious thought about your answers. 1. How many hours of TV do fathers between the ages of 25-34 watch each week? a. 10 hours b. 15 hours … |
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