My Grandmother Edith always took family pictures at holidays and special events. Whether it was Easter, Christmas or someone’s birthday, she had us line up and she took a picture of the family. We all hated the picture taking sessions, but it made her happy … so we did it.
Now that I’m older – I totally understand why she did it. Pictures were her way of keeping track of how we grew and how we changed over the years. It was a pictorial record of the family. Now when I look back – I’m so glad she insisted on those pictures!
Now what has Nanny’s picture taking got to do with your business?
Nanny’s pictures were a kind of measuring system for her. Measuring how we grew and changed. It was a record of our height, weight, hair styles, even clothing.
So, what are you measuring in your business?
Looking back at where you started is a key component of planning for the upcoming new year. It’s so important to know what has worked and what hasn’t worked. But you only know that if you MEASURE.
Perhaps the most obvious measurement in business is finances – sales, revenue, expenses, profit.
But there’s a ton of other metrics that would prove useful to you over time especially when it comes to your marketing (whether online or offline).
Such as…
- Web traffic
- New leads
- Conversion rates
- Goals set and achieved
- Online visibility & reach
If you’re anything like me, you spend time on social media: Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, etc. And obviously – time is precious so we must know if our time invested in these platforms is actually giving us a return on investment (ROI)?
Is that time producing results?
Is it increasing your leads?
Is it increasing your bottom line?
You won’t know that until you start MEASURING some of those metrics.
Imagine if in 6 months or a year from now when you do another planning session, you look at those metrics and realize …. Perhaps you don’t have to put effort into platform A, but rather spend more time in platform B because that’s where you saw results.
Recently, we’ve started to track those numbers in my own business! My VA has started tracking some of these key metrics using an excel spreadsheet and I thought I would share a copy with you here. Feel free to modify it for your own business and share it with your VA.
It’s one of the many TEMPLATES & Scorecards that I’ll be sharing with you in the month of December and that I’ll be sharing with a new group of CEO’s who join the upcoming cohort of CEO MASTERMIND.
If you’re an established business owner who wants to grow/scale your business but can’t seem to identify where to start – then you might be a perfect fit to join this small curated group of entrepreneurs who want to step more fully into their role of CEO. Applications are open until December 24th here. Our first meeting will be January 31st, 2020!
REMEMBER … Maya Angelou said,
“If you don’t know where you‘ve come from, you don’t know where you‘re going”.
Diana
Did you miss….
https://dianalidstone.com/blog/2015/10/06/2015-10-5-if-you-cant-measure-it-you-cant-manage-it/