How’s Your Small Business Health?

10-Question Quiz!

There are multiple approaches to gauging the health of your business.

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There are the KPIs you’ve established to maintain ongoing measures of your business’s performance in all the essential areas of operations and financial outcomes for a period. There’s your average cash flow percentage calculation. There’s the measurement of your profit margin. Then, there are, of course, the many nuanced critical factors that generate all of the above numerical reflections of your success. Some of those are highlighted in the questions below.

Below is a 10-question (YES/NO) quiz for small sweeping company operators to help you track general management performance in key areas.

10 Questions About The Health Of Your Small Business

Some of the nuanced success factors mentioned above include forms of satisfaction, engagement, brand reputation, digital maturity, innovation, growth strategies, and so on. These 10 questions can help you identify and strengthen the key contributors to the sustainability of your enterprise:

1. IS YOUR AVERAGE CASH FLOW WITHIN HEALTHY MARGINS?

Use the 10% method to calculate your average cash flow rate. Divide your annual net total cash flow amount by the total amount of your expenditures. If your net total is 10% or more, that indicates a good average cash flow rate.

2. HAVE YOU CONDUCTED THESE 3 ANALYSES TO DETERMINE YOUR BUSINESS’S POSITION?

Perform an operational needs analysis, a market share calculation, and a competitive analysis. TIP: To calculate your national market share, divide your total sales revenue for a period by your industry’s total sales revenue. For your local market share, divide your total revenue by the total revenues reported by your competitors and your total combined.

3. IS YOUR LOCAL EMPLOYER BRAND STRONG ENOUGH? Do people in your area want to work for you? If not, why not? Do some of your competitors seem to have better luck attracting and retaining top talent? If so, what do they appear to be doing right? Do you need to improve salaries and/or benefits to increase your profits? Do you need to create a more conducive internal culture or improve the physical work environment?

4. DO YOUR FIELD EMPLOYEES DELIVER A STRONG TOTAL NUMBER OF SALES LEADS TO YOU MONTHLY?

The commercial pavement sweeping business is an especially conducive one for employees to handily identify and deliver sales leads to help the company grow. Even the office and shop workers can easily provide some leads. It’s a simple matter of noticing unkempt pavement on parking lots, city streets, HOA continued on page 34

5. DO YOU HAVE AT LEAST ONE BUSINESS PROCESS IMPROVEMENT (BPI) INITIATIVE UNDERWAY?