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Build Your Business by the NumbersCopyright © 2008 Linda FeinholzI've spent a lot of time in meetings during the past two weeks and I found myself noticing opportunities for productivity that my clients kept missing. Each time, I spotted the same missing element: no one was keeping their eye on the numbers. A manufacturer was using two entire days for his monthly management meeting. That's Days! Not hours! A financial advisor insisted he's "been at his work so long there are no new ideas for marketing my business. An executive coach was planning a retreat for her clients that was focused on strategy, without naming their goals. In each instance I found myself pulling back the veil of the hidden element that really magnetizes results: Measuring. As I think about it, there were actually 15 different times over the past two weeks where I spotted the metric that could be used to design and track high payoff business building activities. I used those metrics to sharpen the effort my clients planned to put into growing their business. I mean measuring the value of the activity so that you'll know if the investment of time, energy, resources, political capital and so on was worth it. So I decided to pull together a quick summary of the metrics that might be boosting your results too - if you give them your attention. The value you place on your time The first measure is one that will help you decide what is high priority and what is just interesting or busy work. If your time is worth $15 per hour, then go ahead - be distracted. But if your time is worth, $100, or $200 per hour, or $3,600 per day and so on, they exactly what topics should you spend your time on in meetings? Moreover, what activities after your work are worth your attention? Which high-potential employees or teammates need your encouragement and guidance in daily or weekly meetings? The value you put on your team's time That exercise of building on an individual's hourly income serves very well when they are entry-level staff. But when they take on more senior roles, such as manager or higher their value no longer stands in isolation. Their value is in the results they create through their entire team. There is a compounding effect. The degree to which you use management practices to build our staff's potential, the greater the overall result for the business. The value you place on your market Many people look at the entire industry they are serving in order to envision their business's potential financial return. This wide a view actually is more a a diversion than a useful yardstick. In order to recognize the true potential you could tap, you need to define the niche you want to focus on so that you make noticeable headway and can track the share of business that you have a chance of capturing. The value you place on your product or service The biggest sticking point for many financial advisors, business consultants, and executive coaches is naming their rates. They look around to see what other people are charging to create the limits to their pricing, and miss the point entirely. When you look at other people's pricing you're missing the true opportunity - what is the value you are creating for your clients with the results you are teaching them to produce? With your focus on that result, you'll find you can move your prices up 20, 50, even 100 percent and your clients won't quibble at paying them. As I pointed these values out to my clients, they shifted their perspective and changed what they were focusing on. They didn't abandon the subject, they expanded it to include the new metric. In sharing the added target with their teams and clients, everyone's attention sharpened and new solutions came into view. The manufacturer focused on three topics his team needed to solve and they did it the same day. The financial advisor realized he had expertise in the health care industry and six calls that week brought in two new engagements. And the executive coach put the goals up on the board with the word strategy and her client picked the strategy with the highest payoff in the next two years. So what business building topic have you been spending your time on lately? Now it's time to use the value it will bring your business as the key trigger to prioritizing the time you'll spend on it.
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