When you have your own business, it can be difficult to determine whether it is really growing or not. It may feel as though it is, but perhaps you’re not sure whether you’re just being optimistic. Or perhaps it feels as though it has stagnated when actually it is doing rather well. It’s hard to see what’s really happening when you are so close to it all, which is why stepping back and doing some real testing and measuring will help you work out what your next steps should be.
Check Your Bank Account
It may seem like a simple answer, but checking your bank account can be the perfect way to see how far your business has come. Make sure that the growth is happening, and that you can track when the changes started to happen. That way, you can trace your financial improvements back to a specific advertising campaign or new product. Ensure you know how much you have to spare; be realistic about what you can achieve with your budget.
You can also check out your employee wages (you may need to use a fake check stub maker to keep your records aligned and accurate) and see when you began to take on more people, or pay the ones you already hired more than you did at the start. Again, this will give you a better idea of what you did to cause the improvement. Keeping on track of employee wages can ensure you don’t have any setbacks further down the line.
Speak To Your Customers
Running a successful business isn’t just about making money (although that is certainly part of it). Running a successful business is also about keeping your customers satisfied so that they will return to you and build brand loyalty. It is also so that they will tell other people about you since word of mouth marketing is amongst the best you can get for no outlay. Therefore, it is important to get feedback from your customers to find out what they think of your business, and whether you could make any improvements.
In order to measure your business growth, you should also ask them how well they think you have done over the last year, six months, or any other time period you want to know about. You’ll soon see whether you have really made any headway or not.
Consider Your Customers
If you don’t know how many customers you have, you won’t know whether your business has grown or not. The more customers you have, the bigger your business is (generally – you could, of course, have more customers, but they are spending less, although this is unlikely). If you run an online business, you can easily count how many orders you have, and therefore you will know how many customers you have. Do this each month, and ideally, you will find that the numbers get higher.
If you have a physical store, then you may find it slightly more difficult to count the customers, but by making a note each time someone buys something, you can still compare the numbers.
