Review your business regularly to stay on track!
Reviewing each aspect of your business on a regular basis is an essential part of success! The longer you track your KPIs, the better they can inform what goals you can reach for next.
What to Review: The Seven Essential Elements
Every business is a unique combination of the Seven Essential Elements, which are:
- Business Development
- Financial
- Human Resources
- Legal
- Marketing
- Operations, and
- Sales
When to Review
Daily/Weekly: Elements of your business that change or fluctuate frequently need to be reviewed more often, like sales, marketing, business development, some financial aspects, and operations. If you make lots of small sales, reviewing each day may be the best way to go. You can also review daily AND weekly, to see small and large trends in your sales.
Monthly/Quarterly/Yearly: These reviews are where you capture big-picture information, and are especially useful in the business development, overall financial planning, human resources, and legal elements of your business.
Note that there’s some overlap between the categories! Daily or weekly financial reviews can give you information about day-to-day sales, while an annual review of your business finances can give you data you can compare to previous years, and help make projections for next year.
Adjust Your Targets
During your regular reviews, don’t be afraid to change your goals in any of the aspects of your business! If you made a sale every other day last year and that was enough to cover expenses, you were meeting your KPI targets at the time. If this year during your financial review, you realize you’re selling twice as much and can hire some employees, your sales target will need to increase to cover expenses.
Adjust Actionable Steps
When you adjust your targets, what you’re really adjusting are the steps you take to achieve those targets. If you want to gain a certain amount of clients, you could make more phone calls, or send more marketing emails. At your next review, see if those actionable steps are leading to the outcomes you want. If not, keep adjusting!
How often do you review your business now? Have you found it helpful?
Tell me in the comments!
Reviews are essential for reaching and adjusting goals. I tried something different last year with a mid-year assessment of my business and personal goals. Once I did that, I immediately saw what I intuitively knew. But seeing the concrete evidence and specifics was so helpful in making the adjustments. Other reviews are done more frequently, as you suggested.
At a certain point, if you want your business to grow, it’s essential to focus on the numbers and not just how everything “feels” like it’s going. Reviewing those seven essential elements to make sure you’re protected, prepared, and progressing, and then adjusting where you want to go and how you’re going to get there is the difference between trying and achieving. Thanks for breaking it all down.
Absolutely, getting into the nitty-gritty can help growth!