Control – The first Step in Growing a Phenomenal Business

Whether you’re a formula one driver, an F15 fighter pilot…or a business owner, you can’t accelerate and go faster unless you have sufficient control.

Even the likes of Lewis Hamilton or Fernando Alonso (for race fans like myself) would not be able to drive round the track at amazing speeds if their cars were uncontrollable and didn’t handle well, or the drivers didn’t know what the dials and indicators were showing them on the dashboard! Pilots need to be able to control their planes and get feedback from their instruments regularly.

And it’s much the same in business. Business owners need to have their “dashboards” set up so they can get feedback on their business performance on a monthly, weekly and even daily basis.
A successful business needs to be a constantly evolving entity, moving and changing with the times. Today particularly, it’s important to be continually trying new things to remain competitive. You won’t hear Steve Jobs of Apple saying “well that’s it, we’re not trying any new stuff, we’ve gone about as far as we can go now…” No, you can bet he’s thinking about the next new thing after the iPad.

However if the manager or leader doesn’t know what effect new things are having on the business quickly, things may be going wrong for a while before they get noticed and may end up being disastrous!
So how?

Get control…set up a dashboard consisting of at least:

• Your money indicators: Understand what your balance sheet, profit and loss statements and cash-flow statements are telling you (or get an accountant to interpret them with you).
• You marketing and sales numbers (how many leads each week, how many prospects, how many sales, the conversion rate (%) from prospect to customer, your average transaction value)
• and others depending on what business you’re in

That way, you’ll get feedback as to what’s happening in the business quickly and effectively – and the numbers never lie! When you have control of your business you can then progressively increase your pace, accelerate your growth……..and make more money!