At the beginning of Q2 I encouraged you to answer a whole bunch of questions to set quarterly goals for yourself. One of those questions you answered was this one:
How many prospects do you need to generate each day to reach your monthly goal?
How have you been doing? Have you been reaching that goal? Exceeding it? Falling short? I won’t ask you every month, but I thought that it might be helpful to have a quick look at your goal to see how you are doing. If you’re doing poorly, perhaps you need to break out of your comfort zone and make more cold calls or maybe you need to hire a sales person. If you are exceeding your expectations, maybe you can afford to take an afternoon off and spend it with your family.
(PS If you didn’t answer the Q2 goals, go back and do them now. Believe me, it can make a difference in your business when you set realistic goals that are broken down to the day).
Jessica Routier, IAC-EZ
Now you can be! Mr. Networth has his very own Facebook page.
That’s right! He’s so amazing that he not only flawlessly works through your numbers he ALSO has time to keep a Facebook page. Watch for links to blog articles, discussions about various IAC-EZ topics, and check out his growing collection of photos. (Just don’t challenge him to a game of Bejeweled because, believe me, he’ll win).
Most importantly, become a fan and show the world that you’re friends with a wizard!
Go check it out now!
And don’t worry, Mr. Networth isn’t the kind of friend who tries to convince you to join a bazillion groups or pokes you incessantly. Instead, this is part of IAC-EZ’s effort to reach out to you – our community – and to interact with you right where you are.
So, if you have a question and you happen to be on Facebook (and not on our forum or blog or Twitter or near an email or a telephone or can’t send smoke signals), you can get in touch with us there! Just message us, participate in a discussion, write in our wall.
We’re looking forward to connecting with you there!
-Jessica Routier, IAC-EZ
FAQ is a regular blog feature that answers frequently asked questions and makes them available as a growing list of tagged blogs.
Go to Invoices then to FreshBooks and then click the link that says “Refresh Data Now”.
Do you have a Question? Please email it to support@iacez.com.
In the last blog I wrote about Jim Collin’s book Good to Great and how the third question of his Hedgehog Concept prompts us to think about a single point of measurement to take our business’ temperature.
He wrote: “… Pick one and only one ratio – profit per ‘x’ – to systematically increase over time”. (And he defines “x” as the item that would have the most sustainable impact on your business’ economic engine).
So, what is the measure you can use for your business? It’s different for everyone, of course. It depends on your business model, your offering, your industry, and what elements you want to measure.
But in thinking about how it might apply to businesses – particularly to the small business owners, entrepreneurs, and freelancers that are served by IAC-EZ – I have a few ideas you can use as springboards to your own answer.
- A graphic designer might consider measuring profit per design, which seems to make sense, but what about profit per mock-up/initial sketch? That has possibilities, too, particularly in an industry where customers might require a half dozen sketches of different designs up front. This metric helps you to see how much each customer costs and ultimately impacts your bottom line based on their initial interaction… and it might even help you find ways to reduce the number of mock-ups they demand.
- A freelance writer might use a profit-per-hour, but what about a profit per written word metric? Okay, that requires writers to keep an ongoing total of all of their work to allow them to figure that calculation out, but it’s certainly one way to see what your words are worth! It could be more difficult during the revision process (but I’m not here to solve all of your metric problems, just to give you ideas!)
Go beyond the obvious of profit per month or profit per sale and try to find the metric that captures what you can impact. That’s what Nucor did (see my last blog) where they combined their need to improve productivity and their attention to technology with a profit per ton of finished steel.
More ideas:
- Profit per brand (or profit per line of business)
- Profit per employee
- Profit per download
- Profit per landing page
-Jessica Routier, IAC-EZ
