---

Guest post by: Mandie Crawford Become an Author

Tweet

---

---

Too many people running their businesses forge forward at breakneck speed- getting new clients, running new promotions, changing products - all in an attempt to get more sales, new clients and ideally - more money! What many people fail to realize is that there are customers out there that they have had in the past who might gladly come back with a few small corrections. If 80% of our business comes from 20% of our clients - what if we were to raise the number that were the twenty percent?

Measure your success.

Measuring your success is key to creating a viable business. Understanding what you client likes and dislikes about what you are doing is a great way to identify what changes you may need to make to retain more clients and attract new ones. Making small corrections in your business services, how or what is offered should not be based on rumor, innuendo or just gut feeling - although often these things might precipitate thoughts about change .

What do we measure?

Everything! Not all at once of course. But during the course of each year you need to measure the effectiveness of your printed material, your website, your services, your customer satisfaction level, your products and your electronic communication. (newsletters and ezines) Measuring these things will help you to see where you are going wrong and where you are doing things right. Doing this can save you money, time and effort, and bring in more customers and help keep the ones you have. Isn't that what business is all about?

How do we measure?

Measuring our actions can come in many forms. Have you asked your lost customers why they left? It may seem like a depressing question but it can really help you for the future - and may reconnect you with someone who just fell through the cracks. Surveying your clients, asking for feedback, and following up using electronic surveys and then giving a coupon for answering the survey is one way. If you would like a free survey tool - please check out http://www.surveymonkey.com

Another way to measure your success is to ask people regularly where they learned about you. Have customers give you feedback on your printed materials. Asking them what services that they are aware that you offer is also a good idea. Then you can see what you are not highlighting that they need to know about.

Websites

Using a statistics program is imperative to measure the effectiveness of your website. You should be able to track how people are finding your site, what pages the enter on and exit on, how many unique visitors you have daily, weekly and monthly as well as what search engines have ‘bumped' into your site and how often. Knowing that most of your customers exit on page one or your order page may help you to identify that wording needs to be changed, or ordering is too difficult. You should also be able to see which pages are visited the most.

Electronic Newsletters

Newsletters can be a very effective way to stay in front of your audience - but only if you are able to see several things. One of the reasons to use a newsletter sending service is that they are able to identify how many newsletters bounced, (soft or hard), how many were opened and how many links were followed. This can show you what people are interested in and what they could care less about. This too can save you time and money.

What is working?

Knowing what works in a business is hard for a business owner to see when they are in the middle of the business themselves. It's kind of like they cannot see the forest for the trees. To get the big picture - you really need to use some sort of measurement tools - to assess progress and success.

Rescue a few customers that have fallen through the cracks and you may just improve your business. If you can't do it right the first time- figure out why and do it right the second time around! Now that is failing forward! And there is NOTHING wrong with that!

"One of the keys to effective communication and dispute resolution is understanding ourselves and how we think and also understanding how others are wired as well. Each of us has personality styles that are unique to ourselves - however there are also patterns as well. When you understand the differing personality styles and their blends - you begin to see people as they are with more understanding! For more information on understanding personality styles please contact Mandie at president@roaringwomen.com."

Related Articles

  The Magic Bullet of Marketing
  Financial Analysis: A Tool that Each Business Owner Needs to Use
  How to Get Business to Drop Out of the Sky
  Closing - No Tricks Required
  The Infinite Loop to Nowhere
  Success Isn't Magic
  Get Your Sales Force to Perform Magic and Make Sales Appear!
  Influence - 3 magic words!
  Analysis of Twitter Buying Tweetie
  Magic as a tool for embracing global challenge
  The Magic and Tragic Words of Marketing
  Magic Moments
  Understanding the Long Tail to Be No 1 on Google
  Cash Flow and Business Valuation
  The Magic of the Sales Force Evaluation
  Financial Analysis
  Online Home Business: Do You Have the "Magic Gene" to Attract Business Success?
  Careful Consideration and Analysis
  Think About Others First
  Just how does Analysis Paralysis or avoidance issues affect you in your business?

Related Forum Posts

Re: From Nowhere To #1 On Google In Less Than A Minute!
Re: How much is social media part of your marketing strategy?
Re: How long should a Business Plan be?
EGO
Re: You don't have to see the whole staircase. Just take the FIR

Share this article. Fund someone's dream.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

The Biggest Obstacles I Had To Overcome

The Importance of Master Data Management (MDM)

The Importance of WhistleBlowing

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.