Your business is you. It’s you creating something that wasn’t there before; with material results from your intentions, your energy, your essence, whatever it may happen to be at that time. The science of growing it simply means having prepared leadership, development, producers, and administration. As the process evolves, so do your systems for solving frustrations and focusing on those critical factors that matter most.
This is your rich-making vehicle. Like any car, you’ve got a gas gauge, a speedometer, oil gauge—all the key things you need to know quickly and conveniently if this thing is running properly. You need the same things in your business.
You need the ability to track what’s important. There’s what is quantifiable and easy to count—like sales—but there are also subjective things where opinions are measured, when the ‘qualifiable’ becomes quantifiable.
One issue that’s gained tons of traction over the last couple of years is going green—especially in businesses—from “cloud” computing to energy consumption’s impact on the bottom line.
Some people couldn’t care less about the plight of the pelicans in an endangered eco-system (a shame, for sure), but when you can quantify how switching over to energy-efficient equipment can save thousands of dollars, politics goes out the window. Saving the planet is on the same track as the bottom-line.
Also consider, though, the marketing appeal of being able to sincerely tell your market you support green initiatives. Again, the subjective can become countable in response rates.
Put a scale in and it. Customer satisfaction; employee satisfaction—you measure benchmarks, time frames, the ranges you’d like to be in, or what high/low thresholds would signify danger-zones. They sound complicated, but they’re really not.
How many sales calls and closes per hour would you like to see? You look at what your sales are per month and compare. Too low? Too high (maybe there’s something else not being considered if it’s too good to be true)?
You want the salesperson that follows a script, makes the calls and closes the ratio that they should be closing. That can be copied, duplicated, and most importantly, tracked.
If the oil pressure in your vehicle is too high, you’ve got a problem. If it’s too low, you’ve also got a problem. You want to be in between, yes? What are your operating ranges for your critical success factors?
It might be that you’re willing to spend a certain amount of money per employee depending on their role in your business’ structure. If you’re paying your marketing guy $30,000 more than you really intended, there isn’t going to be much speculation on why your profits aren’t where you want them to be. Like getting a speeding ticket, you had this gauge that you weren’t paying attention to and you exceeded the operating range.
There are things you can count on and physically look at; things you can measure; and real accurate data that you can track—not guess. They’re documented. It could be in a manual you pass out to all employees, or one that you’ve got linked up online.
It takes consistency, predictability, and tracking—systems that can be operated by someone with a base-line level of skill. When you can duplicate that, you’re on track to financial freedom.
