One-year ends, another begins—before 2020 gets going, take this quick quiz and set your sights on greater success.
The end of the calendar year is when businesses reflect on what went well or perhaps not-so-well over the previous 12 months.
The questions below have been used by successful teaching professionals to look back at business performance over the prior year and forward to a better way of doing things—and perhaps more rewarding results. It’s worth your while to print out these questions, which are grouped by category, and keep the page handy. As time allows, fill in the answers by checking your business records and your personal recollection.
Teaching quality: Any lessons you whiffed on this year? Any students you weren’t able to help?
Player success: Are your students getting better? How many shot career low rounds this year?
Percent of book filled: Is your volume building? Level with prior year? Falling off?
Total lessons taught: It’s a simple indicator but many fail to keep tabs on this metric.
Total revenue: Did it hit the goal you set at the beginning of the year (If you didn’t set a revenue goal for last year, it’s strongly advised that you do so for the coming year.)?
Total expenses: Are you still purchasing big-ticket technology? Do you have a strong sense of when “enough tech is enough”? How much do you project to spend next year?
Renewal rate: How many of your students are buying another lesson pack when they run low on the current one (Note: 40 percent is a good benchmark.)?
Sales skills: What is your average order value (AOV)? AOV = dollars-per-booking.
Marketing: What is your ROI on each of the marketing campaigns you tried in 2019?
Business development: Are you turning prospects and meetings—even casual or chance meetings—into actual bookings?
Referrals: How many did you have? Do you have a structured referral program in place, including rewards for those who bring you new business?
Programming: Is it time to move toward more group lessons and fewer individual?
Pricing: How do you stand compared to your competition? More expensive is okay, if you deliver a better product.
Facility improvements: What upgrades are needed to keep things fresh, modern and confidence-inspiring?
Managerial skills: Are you building a team? How much turnover did you have this year?
Rank yourself in each category. Assess your skills, successes, failures and areas where you can improve. A scale of one to 10 should do fine, but be sure that you look honestly at each area. Hopefully you’re using some metrics to define your success. It’s much easier to have an unbiased assessment of your performance with some hard data to guide you.
What categories need the most improvement? What metrics would you track in 2020 to get an accurate view of your performance? Make an appointment in your schedule book to start this process. Your natural curiosity about how things work and where to find greater success will help you along. The result of a thorough self-review will be a solid plan to improve yourself and derive more value and wealth from your business.