Why it’s important to track your company’s growth

The importance of growth in business is certainly a given – why else would we as business owners be so passionately dedicated to ensuring every decision, we make only happens with a growth factor baked in?

When turning a business’s growth into a matter that demands laser-focus, it’s easy to see that it’s a vital part to business sustainability, and so the careful and clear tracking of it, is key to said business’s health, and its future outlook.

Now, you could sit back and let the growth happen – be satisfied that there is growth because you’ve made more profit than last year and it’s showing in the ledgers. But that’s misguided because keeping a close eye on your growth can in fact, be one of the most vital operational insights into the health and possible sustainability of your business.

Let’s have a look at why.

How to track company growth

Simply put, tracking your business growth is about defining a projection for its future. And that starts with defining your business goals at every stage. For example, you as an established middle-market business may want to simply define your goals for growth as building profits and ensuring new business possibilities are always happening and in the mix.

It’s always best, though, to create a comprehensive list of operational factors to monitor – harmony among them all, or dips and rises in one or two, will provide a detailed overview of business growth.

Here are some business metrics to take note of, for tracking growth:

• Increase in customers – this is the most essential for optimum growth. However, a deep dive into the data must always be made, for example: are there many customers coming, but more leaving? An increase in customers means nothing for growth if customer retention is low.
• Increase in profits – this is a good indicator of consistent growth. However, there must still be an eye kept on customer acquisition and retention to maintain profit.
• Increase in sales – obviously more sales happening is a good indication that there’s interest in your product or service, and so growth will inevitably follow. However, do that deep dive again – fleeting promotions and once-off discounts can skew metrics here.

The benefits of tracking company growth

So, let’s get to the ‘why?’. Why are growth rates in business so important to track?

It’s all about insight, so that you can make better business decisions:

Data

Using bigger data, better, to track your growth, will ensure you can more accurately identify potential issues in your business – issues like why you’re not retaining customers, or why your marketing endeavors may not be working. With this insight, you can shuck and jive, and make the market work better for you.

Focus on the positive

If you’re seeing growth in your business, things are working. So, it goes without saying that you’ll want to focus on, specifically, what it is you’re doing right, so that you can keep doing more of it. Tracking growth will give you that insight.

The almighty dollar

Money in, money out – it’s a cycle that keeps a business in flux. But when it comes to the ‘money out’ side, tracking is so critical. Knowing what you’re spending on resources, marketing, or promotions, lets you duplicate the strategies that are working, and quash ones that aren’t. This is just good business, because it stops poor money management – a serious hindrance for growth.

SWOT

The old marketing mantra – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats – is just as apt when tracking business growth. That tracking will let you deftly identify what your business status is, in each of these pillars. And then, you can maintain, improve, pursue, and dodge, as you need to. There’ll be nothing to stop your business growing, then, but the sky itself.

Define your goals, then track and grow your business so that it is healthy and sustainable

When it comes to a business journey, is yours one for growth? When taking on the tradition of having a detailed line of sight in every trackable metric for your growth rates, remember that the first step is to define your goal, and then set these metrics to measure.

And as ever, your journey is our journey. We’ll be there every step of the way, to get you the growth that’ll ensure you not only survive but thrive.