Today is June 6th Today is June 6th so you know what that means, it’s time to assess your May performance. More specifically, let’s talk about assessing monthly results, customer feedback, and stealing seamlessly.
I want you to do a full deep-dive assessment for the month of May because May is the first month we have been trying to recover from COVID and the business closures, social distancing measures, etc. And May is also the first month you executed your recovery game plan. So we need to know how it worked out.
I want you to print out a calendar. Yep, taking it old school here. Print out a calendar for the month of May. Then I want you to look at each week and I want you to notate several key pieces of information. I want you to write on there the day you started executing your recovery game plan, the day you may have made adjustments or changes to that game plan, etc. Write down any changes you made or steps you took to impact your business on the day you took that action.
Second, I want you to write down any changes to business openings in the state you reside in, or the state you sell the most products in, on your calendar. If you sell your products online, look at the top 3 states you do the most revenue in and write down those reopening activities on the dates they occurred.
After you do this, you need to compare your dates with your results. Can you correlate your financial or KPI performance to any changes you/the state governments made in May? If yes, good deal. That’s step one. You know that your plan did work because of what you did or what happened to allow businesses to operate with a bit more freedom. Keep going, and keep fine-tuning your plan. You are on the right track.
If you can’t correlate any of your numbers to any events, and you are still struggling in your business. You have to go do some additional work. (I would recommend you do this work whether you delivered to your monthly plan or not honestly.)
First, reach out to your customers and ask them to complete a survey or join a quick 30-minute feedback session. Offer them a percentage off or a gift for participating. If you can get feedback directly from your customer on what they need, how they want to be served, how they want to pay, etc. then get it! Get it and then do something with it. Use their information to adjust your game plan and then execute.
If you can’t get feedback from your customer, look to your competitors. Are they thriving? What are they doing differently? What can you steal shamelessly and improve upon in your business? (Even if you get customer feedback, I would still say steal shamelessly because it only makes your business better to learn from others without having to be the pioneer in that area. But you may not have time to do both of these right out of the gate.) Remember that you may serve a micro-niche that is different than your competitor so don’t make exactly what they are doing and start running it in your business. Make changes that fit with your brand and your customer.
You may never find out exactly why your recovery game plan didn’t work in May if that’s what happened. But don’t spend too much time on that. Research, but then quickly move to create new processes, offers, products, and services that your customers want and that you can steal shamelessly from your competitors. Your goal is to deliver to your business goals each month in 2020. Focus on rapidly making that happen, especially if you missed your financial targets for 2+ months so far.
Save this episode and listen to it at the beginning of each month to refresh your memory on how to assess your performance.
Be Legendary!