Business Metrics – What Are Your Numbers?

Business metrics development is a huge portion of planning your operational design. Business metrics is simply the production numbers in your business that are important to you.

What are production numbers? If you are a service-oriented business, that may be the number of phone calls to prospects needed to hit certain sales goals. If you know how much you charge in general to develop a solution for a customer, then you know how many customers you need to touch and talk to over a given period of time to be able to get a certain amount of money.

These are the numbers that you as a business owner need to know. In my case, one of my businesses cashes checks. I cash 43,000 checks every year. I know what amount of checks need to be cashed by what month to know if I will meet that number. If I do not hit that number, I know I am behind. I know how much in money order loads I have to have in a given week. I know where I need to be on Wednesdays to hit my weekly number. I know how many customers I need to be able to see in any given month. I know how many new customers I must have coming in by the 15th of every month, etc. These are the numbers that matter in my world. What are the numbers that matter in yours?

Write down your numbers and review them often. You need an in-depth understanding of your business numbers. Review as appropriate for your business. That may be every week or every day. If you are in the stock trading business, reviewing every day the market is open may be appropriate to ensure that trades are good. Whatever the metrics are, you need to have a regular schedule for keeping track of exactly where your business is and knowing the numbers that drive your revenue.

It is not simply about how much money you earn, it is understanding exactly where you need to be production-wise and understanding how that drives revenue. Once you understand the metrics, have a system for regularly reviewing, you can start to improve your system and business processes.

As a coach, one of the most important things I do for my clients is help them develop and measure the success of their operational processes and systems. This component is such a large portion of their material success that we devote time to understanding and creating it.