Maturing POV: Market, Measure & Manage

Every small business journey is unique.

Designing your story can involve many details — from alignment, to differentiation, to systems development and – most importantly – improvement.

Improvement – from a technical definition – means “to enhance in value or quality – to make better”.

Every small business should be aiming for improvement over time — the longer you are in business, the more important improvement naturally becomes.

Between new players and competitors entering the same areas, to micro- and macro-level changes in an economy, price and vendor fluctuations, digital platform algorithm updates and other environmental changes – if you’re not improving, there’s a good chance you may be falling behind (perhaps not knowing until it’s too late).

I’ve written a lot about improvement and metrics on this blog – which look at more granular aspects – today I wanted to take a step back and look at things from a 10,000 foot view and visit 3 views every small business owner should have to make improvement easier over time.

Market (External View)

How do you know how many opportunities exist if you don’t know how large your market is (or how it’s changing over time)?

Keeping an eye on market size is vital for knowing not just understanding how much opportunity exists, but also for understanding how much you can grow by capturing more of those opportunities.

While this is obvious for any business, if you’re too “in it” running the day-to-day agenda (being pulled in too many directions) making time to keep tabs on your market/opportunity potential can easily drop off of your to-do list.

Did you grow at the same pace as your market? Are competitors reshaping your market opportunity count? Is there something else affecting your market size?

While you mostly can’t control external forces, keeping tabs on those items is vital for maintaining or improving your positioning (and adjusting things you can control – see below) as your small business develops.

Measure (Internal View)

How do you know how you’re doing without measurement?

With a better, regular handle on your market size, keeping regular tabs on your internal measurements becomes equally important.

I touched on this earlier on this blog — understanding how each metric level contributes to the next from your marketing (digital or otherwise) all the way to your business performance is a great way to get some clarity.

Tactical metrics feed surface metrics.

Surface metrics feed performance metrics.

Performance metrics feed impact metrics.

Impact metrics feed business outcome metrics.

Each layer creates a causal chain to your most important business outcome metrics (revenue, profitability, et al.).

These are areas you have direct control over – where you can take the most action against the external market view mentioned above.

Manage (Ownership View)

When you step out of your day-to-day – and become the owner again – how do you manage your business?

Being able to step away – and let others operate your business – means managing things from afar.

Combining your external view (market) with your internal view (measurement), you’re able to get a compressed view that allows you to have the context you need (external) to make the changes (internal) that will have the most impact on your long-term goals.

Perhaps you won’t need every metric in your external or internal views, but it creates a real advantage when you can have this at your fingertips.

Maturity Ultimately Means Making Better Decisions

Owning and operating a small business means having more responsibility – and making better decisions.

As you interact with more customers/clients, recruit contractors and employees and create partnerships with vendors & suppliers – the more responsibilities you’ll naturally take on; and your decisions have greater impact on those around you.

While you may be able to “wing it” in the early stages of your small business, over time those added responsibilities means maturing becomes vital not just for you and your team – but for all those that interact with your business.

Market. Measure. Manage. Mature.

Do you have the views you need to improve (and, in turn, mature, as a small business owner)?