testing and measuring

Start with the end in mind is a great saying. But where IS the start? Where are we now and how well are we doing?

Our ActionCoach Kent is a burly South African and doesn't suffer fools or pull punches.

Surprisingly, many small businesses operated from a month to month basis with a tea chest for receipts and an Accountant that "did the numbers" once a year. The bank overdraft was a necessity of business and cash flow was a constant worry. Great at doing the work for a client but crap at issuing invoices and collecting payments.

One of the smart investments that we made years ago was to have a regular bookkeeper - who provided weekly profit & loss reports and kept invoices to clients under good control.

But did a regular P&L report tell the full story? Of course not. What Kent highlighted to us was the fact that we needed clarity of what worked and what didn't. When we invested in a marketing campaign how successful was it? What were the alternatives? We needed to identify our current position and then start REGULARLY recording our business performance - and then monitor against this our marketing strategies to see which worked and which didn't - simple.

Working with Kent we developed a dashboard that we all could access and review. Using Google Docs we were able to introduce a simple system for recording our Key Performance Indicators. The KPI's were relevant to our business and meant that we were able to put on a cross on the map - where we currently where - now all that was needed was to work out where we wanted to end up.