Are You Tracking Your Numbers?

Amber Singleton Riviere — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:00:09 +0000

How do you know you’re, in fact, succeeding in your business? It may seem like you’ve had a steady flow of new customers, but are you tracking the numbers to be sure?

It’s easy to lose track of time and get confused about when you signed that new client and how many jobs you’ve had this month or this year.

Tracking key metrics for your business can help you see exactly how well your business is doing. It can help you make improvements, forecast income and set goals for your future.

But what should you track? The answer really depends on your business. What’s important to one won’t be important for another. In most cases, though, it’s best to keep it simple and not overthink it.

Track Your Income

The most important thing you must know at all times is if you’re making money. Time can pass more quickly or slowly than you believe, making you think you’ve made more or less than you actually have, so it’s important to have regular check-ins to see where you are financially. A good rule of thumb is to check in weekly to see how much you’ve made and where you are in relation to your monthly goal.

Track Your Pending Income

It may seem like you’re coming up a bit short one week, but money in the pipeline may put you back on track. Always keep an eye on the horizon so that you have a better idea of what’s to come for your business.

Track Your Clients, Customers, Jobs or Projects

You need to be able to average your income by client or project so that you can make projections and adjustments for your business and know roughly how many clients or projects you need to meet your income goals. This is also a helpful performance metric. You might see that it took you twelve projects to make the same amount of money as eight projects this time last year.

Track the Sources of Your Business

Are clients finding you through your web site, or are they being referred to you by past clients? Knowing the source of your customers and clients can help you fine-tune your marketing and lead generation plans to make the most of your resources.

Of course, there are a variety of metrics that can be tracked aside from those mentioned here, including your website traffic and subscriber counts, so you’ll need to figure out what’s most important to your business.

Keep it simple, or you’ll be less likely to keep up the tracking. Pay attention to the numbers driving your business, and then figure out how to improve or maintain them.

How do you make metric-tracking easy and painless? What have you found to be the most important things to track for your business?

Flickr image by net_efekt

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Measuring Success as a Freelancer

Dawn Foster — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:00:37 +0000

Before becoming a full-time freelance consultant, I worked at a couple of very large companies and some small startups. While big companies and startups have different ways of doing business, there are also many common business practices used by most companies regardless of size. Measuring success across a variety of metrics is one of those practices embraced by companies of all sizes. When I work with clients, I help them figure out how they will measure the success or failure of the online community projects that we are implementing together. However, recently I realized that I haven’t done a good job of measuring how successful I have been as a freelance consultant.

Don’t get me wrong, I measure many things and look at the results with a critical eye. I have analytics to measure my blog traffic, tracking tools for social media metrics, business metrics (finance, marketing, etc.), and much more. What I haven’t done is clearly defined what success as a freelancer looks like for me. Do I want steady growth in blog traffic, and if so, how much? What are my financial goals for individual programs (training, consulting, book sales) and overall for my consulting company? How important are various social media metrics to my business?

The measurement options are almost endless. I could measure hundreds of activities and track everything, but I think that I will take my own advice. I generally advise clients to pick the top three to five items that determine success and focus on those items as the primary success metrics. I will continue to measure much more and use those additional measurements as background research to help determine additional ways to improve my business. I think that it is important to draw this distinction between measurement and success metrics. Success metrics determine whether or not you have been successful while measurements feed into your success metrics and can be used to help understand how and why certain programs are a success or failure.

While I figure out how I plan to measure my success, I’d like to hear from you. How do you measure your success?

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Are You Tracking Your Numbers?

Measuring Success as a Freelancer