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Reviewing Your Business Performance

So you've made it through your first year. When you quit your

job, you probably thought you'd escaped performance reviews for

good, but I've got some bad news for you. It's actually a really

good idea to review your performance at your own company, to

take a look back and see what you did wrong and what you did

right.

Did You Make a Profit or a Loss?

The first, and most important, question to answer is this: what

does your balance sheet look like? You need to honestly add up

all the numbers -- don't be tempted to add on money that you

think you're a few days from getting, or take away bad purchases

that proved useful in your personal life, for example. Hopefully

you kept electronic records, so this shouldn't be too much

trouble.

Once you know how you did, you need to look at how to do better.

If you made a loss (as almost everyone does in their first

year), what can you do about it? Where did the money go? If you

made a profit then, well, congratulations! But you still need to

think about how much of your profit to re-invest in the

business, and how you can increase your profits next year.

Remember that money makes money: once you're making a profit,

wise investment can make it grow exponentially.

How Many Customers Did You Get?

Now, take a look at your customer database. What's the total

number of people who dealt with you this year? How many is that

per day, and how much did each one spend? Once you have this

information, you can work out how much customers were paying you

overall weekly, daily or even hourly. If it seems like a lot

more than you saw, you need to ask yourself if you spent too

much of their money on expenses. If it seems like hardly

anything, then you're in trouble. Sorry to be blunt, but either

you need to consider raising your prices, or you're just not

doing enough marketing or working hard enough.

How Many Came Back?

Of course, a more important metric than the total number of

customers you had last year is how many of them came back more

than once. Work out what percentage of your business that was

repeat business -- note that this means you count someone twice

if they bought from you three times overall, three times if they

bought from you four, and so on.

An easy way to do this is to simply take your number that says

how many times a customer has dealt with you, subtract one from

all of them, and then add it up. Once you know the raw amount of

repeat business, you need to divide it by your total number of

customers and then multiply by 100. This gives you a percentage.

If your repeat business is lower than 20% or so of your total

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business, this is cause for concern. Are you doing enough to

stay in touch with your existing customers?

What Did Customer Complaints Say?

I hope you kept hold of every customer complaint you got, even

if you fixed it at the time. You need to take a good look over

what you did right, what you did wrong and what you messed up. I

know you dealt with things as they came up, but looking back

over everything can help you to see the big picture. It's all

too easy to miss quite simple patterns when you're in the thick

of it day-to-day, and looking at the complaints can reveal a

trend that you weren't expecting.

What Have You Learned?

It can be useful to write yourself out a list of lessons at the

end of the year, even if it's things like 'quarter-page magazine

ads are just as effective as half-page ones' or 'make lunch

later in the day so you eat it faster'. Your accumulated

knowledge is valuable: you've paid for it in cash and in sweat,

so make sure you don't forget it. See if you can come up with a

list of positive things to do next year to make your business

even better!

About the author:

Original Source: Articles-Galore.com

Information supplied and written by Lee Asher of The Home Income Portal

Home of Serious Online Business Options.