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Tracking for Profits
by Paul Lemberg
Published on this site: April 20th, 2006 - See
more articles from this month
If you can't track it, don't do it.
Every high-performance venture needs a tracking system. A
tracking system with well-designed metrics lets everyone know
how well they are doing relative to their commitments. It
is aguide to whether additional or extraordinary actions need
to be taken.
It is one of the first things I set up with my business coaching
clients because without a clear set of objective metrics it
is hard for people to be clear about their results.
Establish intentions for your project, figure out the critical
success factors, determine suitable measurements for each,
and set performance targets for those measures.
For example, say your intention is to increase market penetration.
The measure is your venture's sales divided by total sales
in your market. Perhaps your current market share is 10% -
good, you have a benchmark, and your new target is 25% by
the end of the year.
That's objective, measurable, and thus... achievable.
Make someone accountable for your project's performance against
each target.
Establish a timely tracking system for each metric, which
easily gathers the necessary data.
Develop periodic interim performance targets, and a reporting
structure to let everyone involved know how they are doing.
Your performance tracking systems can be kept with pen and
paper, or they can be automated on your computer system. However
you implement them, keep it simple and don't let the overhead
of your tracking system become a burden of any kind.
Below is a very simple system I used to keep track of my page
output while writing Faster Than The Speed of Change. It was
kept on a computer spreadsheet, but could just as easily been
pencil on graph paper. Whenever I was below the line I had
catching up to do.
Start with 0 in the lower left corner, write units of measurement
along the left axis, and dates of measurement along the bottom.
Draw a straight reference line from 0 to your goal, and plot
your performance against that goal. Of course the reference line need not be straight; set it up in whatever
way reflects the time-relationship of your goals.
If you want to find out how you can set up a performance dashboard
and completely systemize your entire business to make it "scalable
and saleable" link to http://www.turnkeycoach.com
Business Coach http://www.paullemberg.com,
Paul Lemberg is the President of Quantum Growth Coaching,
the world's only fully systemized business coaching http://www.quantumgrowthcoaching.com
program designed to rapidly create More Profits and More LifeT
for entrepreneurs.
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