Track your business performance

Obviously, we need to work out why is going backwards and how to make it go forward!

• Who is your customer
• What is your marketing budget?
• What is your marketing objective?
• What is your strategy – your steps to talk to your customer.
• Social media, radio, press, email marketing, PR

• Identify how far your business has gone backwards by comparing sales and profit with a previous period.
• List any changes you have made to your product or service offering.
• Do you have any new competition?
• Are there external forces out of your control?
• Create a new plan based

Let’s look at where your business is now compared to a previous period. This might be the last quarter, or the same time last year.  Start with your revenue, then look at your profit.  Normally if your sales are down, there is a good chance your profit is down.  Is it down 5%, 10% or more.  You need to also look at market segment and if that is down across the board. For example, you might be retailer of sewing machines, however the whole industry is down by 10% because people aren’t sewing as much yet you are down 5%. This means you are actually growing your market share.

List any changes you have made to your products or services. You may have increased your prices, changed your offering or something similar. Write any changes down as often even if you feel it isn’t important.

Any new competitors entered your space?  Have you analysed their offering? Could your customers perceive this new competitor a better alternative to what you offer?

What areas out of your control? Maybe you own a shop in strip location and there are roadworks or a carpark has been closed?

Once you have reviewed the above, you can start to develop a new plan around these changes.   It is very easy in businesses to become complacent or to blame something else if you business isn’t performing.  By reviewing and listing the above it will help you re focus on what you can do to overcome these challenges instead of not doing anything or hoping that your business will just re set itself which is a very risky approach.