When you define “success”, you give yourself the opportunity to be “more successful”. This means making more money, having more peace of mind, and the feeling of “positive momentum”.
80% of the battle is working on what “success’ means for you and your organization. It’s a task that takes 20% of your time, but produces 80% of the results.
Defining success means sitting down and looking at your business by critical function and defining SUCCESS INDICATORS. I look at business as having the following three critical functions:
FINANCE, MARKETING/SALES, OPERATIONS.
What defining “SUCCESS” and “SUCCESS INDICATORS” means answering the following questions –
What does a WIN for the finance function of your business look like or a LOSS for operations look like?
Defining success is simply determining the benchmarks of failure and success for your business by function.
That means defining the “KEY SUCCESS INDICATORS” or “key performance indicators” – below are a few examples:
1) How many days cash do we have compared to what our SUCCESS BENCHMARK is?
2) How many new leads did we get this month, compared to what our SUCCESS BENCHMARK is?
3) What is our project turnover time, compared to what our SUCCESS BENCHMARK is?
When you do, you now have a basis for measuring your business and making improvements to effect positive change.
When you don’t do this and are not feeling positive momentum in your business, then what are your options for improving?
Well, when you don’t have any key success indicators, you are not really even sure.
What typically business owners resort to is “WE NEED MORE SALES” to fix the problem…
When the reality is that the “cash crunch” can be due to collections taking 10 days longer, or project turnover taking 7 days longer, or marketing/sales converting prospects at a lower percentage.
Therefore, fixing SALES is not going to solve the problem. In fact, it may make the problem worst (as sales consumes working capital, and more sales means a greater consumption of capital).
I’m 100% certain that defining what success means in your business, assigning responsibility, and keeping people accountable WILL results in a positive change to the bottom line.
I’m also 100% certain that many entrepreneurs struggle with this as I’ve seen a large response for people requesting our 5 Step SMART System for businesses. You can request yours here.
Hope to see you on the inside!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joe Gallegos has created tax strategies and operating systems for businesses that have saved taxes, increased cash flow, and profits. As the Managing Partner of Tax and Consulting for JAG + Argueta CPA Firm , Joe has taught hundreds of business owners his step-by-step strategies for creating their own success and obtaining more time and more profits. For more profit creating business tips, tactics and strategies, sign up up for our tips here.
