Insights on How a Dashboard Can Help Enable a Successful Business
Running a business takes a lot of focus, passion, and dedication. There are many tools and tons of classes to help you along the way, but there are various schools of thought on how to build a successful company. It’s best to subscribe to things that make sense for your business and that resonate with you. Ultimately, doing something you enjoy and becoming more and more competent with it will have you building success with small victories along the way. This has been my recipe for success.
One of the most grounding elements you can incorporate into a business is a dashboard to manage the business. This tool has allowed me to manage my business while I learn and grow. The functionality of a dashboard is a broad thing, and it can mean different things to different businesses.
A dashboard illustrates the vital activities of your business. It’s a result of measuring the performance of an aspect of the business over time and can thus illuminate the health of the business. Used regularly and kept up to date, it allows an entrepreneur to see what’s happening from a broader perspective. Like anything, the more time and intelligence used to craft this dashboard specific to the business, the better it serves as a key element in objective decision-making processes. It is important to choose the most vital elements of the business to measure versus choosing items that essentially amount to “busy work.”
For example, a pet store would likely be interested in measuring the number of pets placed in an adoptive home, number of pet products sold, and number of pets on hand ready to be adopted. A chiropractor, on the other hand, would measure number of patient visits, value of insurance billings, number of new patients, and number of educational events to attract new patients. An artist may measure number of pieces finished, quantity of promotional shows booked, revenue from pieces sold, and number of new client leads.
Based on tracking a few vital areas for the business, it’s easy to see if there’s a need for improvement or, based on success, the need to strengthen any one of the tracked areas. Thus it’s simpler to make objective decisions on steps to take to get the business to where you intend for it to go. Making decisions from a non-emotional point of view is key to keeping the show on the road! As you grow, the success of the business becomes the stability of countless employees. This is important and genuinely conveys confidence and thus creates trust from your team and is an excellent way to create loyalty, which retains key people. Your confidence and competence translates to the team you’re growing and nurturing.
My business is a very personal thing to me, so some things can be emotional. This is why when it comes to making key decisions regarding the future, having a dashboard for management makes it so you can lead from a strategic point of view.
The first thing to look at in starting a company is the things that are vital for the business to survive. These became many of the core areas, to this day, that we track which show the vital signs of the company. They include:
- Number of marketing pieces
- Quantity of interested leads
- New deals created
- Delivered estimates
- Value of sales invoiced
- Income
- Jobs complete
- Happy clients
The statistics for marketing pieces include measuring website sessions from Pinterest, Google AdWords and organic traffic along with blogs posted, social and email campaigns sent, and personal notes sent to leads. If people are not visiting our website and engaging with us, the rest of the statistics will soon be impacted. Keeping these marketing actions flowing creates interested leads and engagement with our brand.
The new deals statistic measures the amount of people shifting from a lightly interested lead to a client that is engaging about a specific project.
This will predict how likely we are to create estimates. The delivered estimates statistic indicates how many bids we’re sending out. These estimates enable clients to understand the investment needed to make their dreams a reality. The goal is to keep estimates gradually increasing.
The next statistic is the value of sales invoiced. Some businesses collect cash at this point right away; some businesses give clients time to pay. Your business model is yours, so select a method that allows the business to have a healthy amount of cash flow to allow smooth and expanding operations.
The income statistic is cash flow. My business started with very little capital; therefore, the model I use is deeply rooted on acquiring 50% of the cash up front when we get hired and receiving the final balance when the job is fully done. This creates a model where my team is always motivated to create and complete jobs as efficiently as possible. Richard Branson says, “Never take your eyes off the cash flow because it’s the lifeblood of the business.” The freedom a business has by being aware of this one statistic is quite powerful. It allows the business to fund its growth. In the beginning it can be challenging for a business to obtain loans and acquire investors when there is no proof of concept. If the business is able to grow organically and become stable purely on cash flow, this is truly powerful and is at the core of the American Dream. Whatever your dream is, pursue it and make it your life. If you are truly passionate about it, you will attract people to become a part of your team. They will feel your passion, your happiness and pride will translate into theirs.
The jobs complete statistic simply adds to the prediction of the cash flow generated from completed jobs. The sooner the job gets completed, the sooner the final payment flows into the company as a resource to operate with.
Our happy clients statistic is something we take a lot of pride in and is at the heart of this whole operation. One happy client can and does translate into three new clients and so on and so on. The way this statistic is measured is by number of favorable online reviews, quantity of referrals, repeat business, and finally by the number of closed, resolved customer care cases we have. A customer care case for us is a record of a customer with an issue that we are responsible for resolving. The client getting a solution to the point of their satisfaction and genuine happiness can sometimes go further than if we got it done right the first time.
Having things that measure the performance of your business truly make for an inspiring and constructive playing field. When you have an idea of where all the moving parts are, you are more likely to succeed. Being more likely to succeed in your business places you above the competition, and you become in control of the future.
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