A New Season Begins for Your Business

Las Vegas, NV, March 19, 2009 --(PR.com)-- As a new baseball season begins for one of the most statistically-driven sports, a focus on the numbers of your business is one of the best places to start to leverage higher profits for long-term growth.

According to ActionCOACH, the world’s number one business coaching firm, a numbers focus is one of the most important strategies a business owner can adopt to grow his or her company.

“We call it ‘numbers mastery,’ and it is absolutely essential for owners to master their numbers for a successful business,” ActionCOACH Director of Marketing Nathan Smith said. “After all, you can’t change what you don’t measure.”

According to Smith, the majority of owners don’t know what their breakeven points are for their products or their companies.

“Our experience shows that less than 7% of all business owners know today what their breakeven is on a daily basis,” he said. “When you see statistics that also show 4 of 5 businesses don’t make it past their five-year mark, you can start to see a correlation between ‘numbers mastery’ and business success.”

So what types of numbers should an owner master first?

“Those that drive profit,” Smith said. “While this sounds obvious, many owners aren’t sure which numbers boost profit. Most immediately, owners should focus on increasing leads, conversion rates and profit margins. Of those, raising profit margins will have the most immediate impact right away on the bottom-line.”

A focus on numbers has helped propel a number of baseball teams to greater success over the years, as illustrated in the Michael Lewis best seller titled “Money Ball.” Teams including the Oakland A’s and Boston Red Sox have adopted systems of KPI’s (or “Key Performance Indicators”) to rate players and make game decisions based on statistical probabilities.

“Many baseball owners and general managers have come to the conclusion that benchmarking certain numbers is the key to success,” Smith said. “The same holds true in business. Only by having a benchmark and key metrics can you compare performance quarter-to-quarter and year-to-year. ‘Numbers mastery’ really is the only way to make good decisions for your company and your team.”

Some of the questions many ActionCOACH Business Coaches ask their clients may help develop a greater sense of numbers mastery. Those include:

Do you know how many customers you need (or how many sales you need to make) today to make a profit?

Do you know how many sales you need to breakeven?

Do you know how long you’ll have to work this year just to pay your taxes?

Do you know how many prospects you need in your sales pipeline to generate enough customers to make your profit margin?

Do you know your profit margin?

“The key is putting an innate fear of numbers behind you and figuring out what your company needs not only to survive – but to grow,” Smith said. “If you can do that – you’re already miles ahead of your competition.”

ActionCOACH is the world’s number one business coaching and executive coaching firm, with more than 1,000 offices in 26 countries. To learn more, go to actioncoach.com/bus_health02.php.

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