Drive Your Business by the Numbers

Most people are totally in the dark with their numbers, both professionally and personally. Why drive your business blindly? To truly achieve breakthrough results in overall business performance, you must create an insight-driven organization by identifying, benchmarking and monitoring key performance indicators.

The challenge is that most entrepreneurs are way too busy to review numbers on a regular basis. So it’s important to set up systems so that you don’t have to look at the numbers in isolation; instead, you need to look at the trend that the numbers are taking. And rather than being buried and overwhelmed by 72 lines of data, just pick three influential numbers, and watch those numbers on a weekly and monthly basis. If those three numbers become better, then typically all numbers become better.

Consider the case of an entrepreneur that needs to grow revenue and knows that for every five meetings booked, she receives three requests for proposals. And from three proposals, she can close one deal. The numbers she needs to watch to grow revenue are 5 meetings, 3 proposals and 1 deal. You also need to watch numbers in relation to a goal. For example, if you have $200,000 in really high, old accounts receivables, greater than 60 days, and the goal is to get to $50,000, you need to always watch the number in relation to the goal ($50,000). You’ll find a way to get to your goal.

Breakthrough Concepts

	Set up systems so you don't have to look at numbers in isolation; instead look at the trend the numbers are taking.
	Pick three influential numbers; if those three numbers become better, then all numbers typically become better.
	What gets measured, gets done.

How can you beat the procrastination habit? Remember the story of the Princess and the Toad, where an unhappy Princess frees a handsome Prince from a frog’s body with a kiss? Imagine if she avoided the Toad and instead thought: “How disgusting. I’ll never kiss you.” Read more.