7 Questions to Ask to When Evaluating Last Year’s Success

If you’ve been in business a few years, it’s a good practice to set goals for taking your business to the next level. The best way to do that is to start where you are and conduct a business review of last year. Some questions you might ask include:

1. How many clients did you have last year?
2. What is your ratio of clients to leads? How many leads did you have that didn’t turn into clients?
3. Where did your clients come from? Referrals, ads, website – which were most effective? Which were least effective and a waste of time and money?
4. How many transactions per month did you have? Which months were best? Worst?
5. How much money did you make last year? Was it a steady income or did it come in spurts?
6. What were your expenses for last year? Are there any expenses you can cut this year?
7. How many referrals did you receive?

Each of those questions gives you a measure of how successful your current business is, as well as point out weaknesses where you might improve your results for this year. Look at your best sources of new clients and set goals to cultivate them even more this year.

Next, look at your least-effective activities and look for ways you can either improve them, hand them off to someone, like a virtual assistant, or eliminate them from your business, if they can be eliminated.

Use this as a benchmark for where you want to be. If you know certain months are slower than others, look for new ways to cultivate business – such as getting more referrals during those months, or focus more heavily on creating your marketing campaign to prepare you for your busy season.

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