There is great excitement in your business when you begin chipping away at the actionable item list that you created from your focus group notes. The actionable item list included ideas that could be implemented immediately and had the potential to have a great impact on your business.
You must track your results.
Let's go back to the restaurant serving breakfast that opened at 8A. Their focus group pointed out that they were losing business with everyone who likes to eat breakfast between 6A and 8A. The restaurant changes hours and now opens at 6A. This increases payroll and utility costs. They must begin tracking their sales during this new two hour window to determine if this was a smart business move. Are they seeing new customers? Does the average sale increase with people that come in earlier? Tracking results is overlooked more often than you would expect.
In my radio sales career I would cold call prospective accounts and often hear the objection "advertising doesn't work." How's that for a profound statement? With further probing I would often find that they did not have any process in place to measure the effectiveness of the advertising they invested in.
Tracking results is necessary in planning your future. It takes discipline, but it is worthwhile. Don't ever get to the point where you say..."I'm not sure if this change we made to our business is working or not." No one will be able to help you when you are in that frame of mind.
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