Monitoring Key Performance Indicators: A Guide for Entrepreneurs

Jan 4
01:17

2024

Michele DeKinder-Smith

Michele DeKinder-Smith

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The first step towards steering a business towards future success is understanding its past performance. This article delves into strategies that can help entrepreneurs, particularly two distinct types, to measure their business performance and fortify their enterprises.

A comprehensive study by Jane Out of the Box,Monitoring Key Performance Indicators: A Guide for Entrepreneurs Articles a renowned authority on female entrepreneurship, identified five unique types of women in business. The study, which involved over 2,500 women entrepreneurs, revealed that each type of business owner has a unique approach to running a business and therefore, unique needs. This article will focus on two of these types, providing insights on how to track business performance and use the information to build a robust future.

Tenacity Jane: The Passionate Entrepreneur

Representing 31% of women in business, Tenacity Jane is an entrepreneur characterized by her undeniable passion for her business. Despite struggling with cash flow and working longer hours for less money, Tenacity Jane is determined to make her business a success.

For Tenacity Jane, performance measurement is crucial as it provides insights into which systems are working and which aren't, enabling her to better allocate her limited resources. By engaging in candid conversations with customers, she can identify which aspects of her business are profitable and which are not.

For instance, if she's investing heavily in newspaper and radio advertising, customer feedback might reveal that most of her customers don't read the newspaper but heard her ad on the radio. This information can help her optimize her marketing budget by focusing on radio advertising.

Accidental Jane: The Unintentional Entrepreneur

Accidental Jane is a successful, confident business owner who never actually intended to start a business. She might have started her business out of frustration with her job, a layoff, or to meet her own unmet needs that others also shared. Accidental Jane represents about 18% of all women business owners.

Accidental Jane entrepreneurs often express a high level of satisfaction with their work-life balance. However, some reported feeling stressed as their business fluctuates depending on their marketing efforts. For Accidental Jane, tracking performance metrics can help maintain a consistent workload and increase profit without much additional effort.

Accidental Jane can leverage positive customer feedback to gather testimonials and gauge what's working. She can also create an automated marketing system to maintain her workflow and use software to determine which marketing technique is attracting customers. For instance, she can track which customers visited her website after receiving tweets or a weekly newsletter, and which of those made a purchase. This way, she can effortlessly monitor the effectiveness of her marketing techniques.

Regardless of how successful a business owner is, continuous improvements can be made by paying careful attention to which systems are working. Tracking performance metrics allows entrepreneurs to maximize efficiency and capitalize on success.

For more information about the five Jane types and to find out which Jane you are, visit Jane Out of the Box.