As a business owner who wants to achieve maximum success, you need to carry out daily analysis of your business. This is not too much to do. The more you practice the habit of constantly analyzing your business and improving, the higher your chances of achieving great success. In this post, I share ten important questions to ask and answer about your business, daily. They are:
1. What Business Am I Really In?
Defining your business is the first thing to get right when analyzing it. And this has to happen every time you analyze the business. It is not a one-time thing to do. When you define your business daily, you reawaken your consciousness to the kind of business you are doing: product or service business, production or distribution, wholesale or retail, sole-proprietary, partnership or shareholding. You also become more conscious of what your business is not and with this knowledge, you can better focus your energies and become the best at whatever you are.
2. What Are My Goals?
Constantly reminding yourself of your goals is good to focus your attention on where you hope to be in the next few to many years. This practice does not only keep you focused but also motivates you and keep you on fire to achieve them.
It is not just enough to have goals for your business. Having goals is important, keeping your eyes focused on them is more important, but working hard daily to see that they are achieved, is excellent. When you set goals, you set short-term, medium term and long-term goals and on a daily basis it is important to analyze the business to see if it is going in the direction that will eventually achieve its goals.
3. Where Am I Right Now?
When you analyze your business by looking deeply at your goals, it is just normal to go on and ask the question, where am I now? Your business will certainly be making progress or retrogressing at every point in time. Asking this question will make you think and analyze all the different aspects to see how much progress you have made so far. Here you will be looking at progress in terms of net worth, customer strength, sales, market share, good will, employees satisfaction, expertize, etc. Take time and look at these aspects, making sure you are ever progressing.
4. Who Are My Customers and What Do They Want?
You must have known by now that business is about maximizing profit and the best way to maximize profit is to ensure high turnover rate. Turnover rates are affected more, by the number of customers you can win in the market. Thus, any serious business owner must be concerned about the number of customers he has and who they are. I have written an amazing post that will help you have a sound knowledge of your customers. See “Six Things You Must Know About Your Target Customers”.
5. How Satisfied Are My Customers
You are in business to make profit, but what will ensure this and keep you in business is your ability to keep your customers, satisfied always. Doing business and not being bothered to know what your customers think about your products or services is a sure way to hit the rocks. Your opinion about your business does not count as much as those of your customers. Whatever they say, is true. Take it seriously and improve. Your customers gain nothing when you take heed of their words. You gain everything. See “How To Increase Your Customer Base” for more insight on this.
6. What Are My Strengths
Have you ever heard of SWOT analysis? It is analyzing the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats in relation to a business so as to be directed on how to make progress. SWOT analysis offers a great tool which any business owner must exploit.
You begin by analyzing the strengths of your business. What are we getting right? What is it that we do better than our competitors? It could be the competence of your staff, the amount of capital you have, the business location, the technology you have, the amount of recognition your business has gained, your customer base, you product quality, etc. Make a list of all your strengths and start working to further strengthen them.
7. What Are My Weaknesses
As you analyze your strengths, you will surely be exposed to your weaknesses. Your weaknesses are just the opposite of your strengths. They are those aspects in which you are poor/weak. It could be lack of expertize amongst your staff, or little cash to plunge in to the business, or low standard technology, or low quality of goods/services, etc. When you discover all your weaknesses, begin working hard daily, to strengthen those aspects of your business, making sure you don’t lose sight of the things you are strong in. Some of your weaknesses are things you need to avoid and things that cause problems and complaints.
8. What Are My Opportunities
Opportunities are the next thing to analyze daily and they have to do with new trends in your line of business which you could take advantage of. It could be changes in technology, changes in government policies, new markets and marketing techniques, lifestyle changes, population fluctuations etc. If any of these things are happening and are in your favor, they are your opportunities. Grab them each time you notice them. A good business owner plans and makes room for opportunities that could show up for anyone to grab.
9. What Are My Threats
These have to do with the things your competitors are doing and the external environmental factors, which do not favor your business. They could be change in the competitor’s product or packaging, change in their price, change in the competitor’s location, growth in the work force and technological strength of your competitors, and so on.
Strengths and Weaknesses are internal factors that concern your business, while Opportunities and Threats are external factors that could affect your business positively or negatively. At the end of your SWOT analysis, determine what must be addressed immediately and what should take some time for you to address.
10. What Are My 80-20s?
The 80-20 principle is a very important and excellent way to analyze a business. One thing you need to realize about profit-making is that it is not only about making more money. It is also about spending less money. In other words, the less you spend without having to compromise with your quality, the more you make. You will always have limited resources of time, money and men. You must therefore allocate these resources carefully in order to achieve more by committing less. This can really be possible by analyzing your 80-20s.
In analyzing your 80-20s, you are seeking to know, what 20% of the things you do directly account for 80% of the results you get. Answering this question will mean that you now know what to concentrate more of your efforts and resources on. What are the 20% of your customers that account for 80% of your sales? What are the 20% of the things you do, that account for 80% of the results you get? Try to get these answers and your eyes will be opened to see the things that really matter as far as the success of your business is concerned.
The above ten questions will put you ahead always, in the market, in the midst of the fiercest competition. When carrying out effective analysis of your business, you need to involve the rest of your business team members; meaning that even as you ponder on these questions daily, you also need to create brainstorming sessions with your workers, to analyse the business.
By Kadzem Claude
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