What signals of non-performance are there in your business? Take a closer look, because they could be clues that you’re wasting time and effort on products or services that just aren’t worth it. It could be your wake-up call to either fix that product or service, or give it the flick altogether.

There are several simple measures you want to take of each of your products and services, to help you check for signals of non-performance:

- profit margin

- sales conversion (% leads that buy)

- lead conversion (% marketing audience that become leads)

- revenue

- customer satisfaction.

SIGNAL #1: Everyone’s making a buck – except you!

A small profit margin, or – quelle horreur! – a negative profit margin, is certainly an alarming signal that you have a non-performing product or service. When your suppliers and customers are getting lots of benefit, but you’re not, then it’s time to ask a few questions.

Are you charging enough for the product or service, and will your customers accept the price rise required to make it worth your effort? Are you gold-plating your product or service, wasting money in producing it? Are you spending too much time in delivering it? How can you streamline the production and delivery of your product or service? If exploring these questions gets you nowhere, it might be time to give it the flick.

SIGNAL #2: You’re flogging a dead horse.

You might be getting lots of leads or enquiries about the product or service, and you might have fantastic sales copy. But if your sales conversion is low, then one of the more obvious reasons is that your product or service is not what people want as the solution to their problem. And this signal is even stronger if you’re marketing isn’t producing high lead conversion.

Short of having another go at revamping your marketing activities and sales copy – like your ads or sales presentations or product brochures – you may simply have the wrong product or service for your market. In this case, you’d give it the flick. Instead, research what your market really wants and create a product or service that fits.

SIGNAL #3: It’s driving its own demise.

It’s a sure way to a bad reputation to keep selling a product or service that doesn’t work. If your customer satisfaction is consistently low or mediocre (averaging less than 7 on a 10 point scale, for example), you can’t expect revenue to grow and keep growing. So particularly when revenue starts to plateau or decline, and customer satisfaction is mediocre at best, you need to take a closer look at your product or service quality.

If you can fix it affordably, then excellent. Otherwise, and particularly when other companies are doing it so much better than you can or are prepared to, give it the flick and find yourself another niche you can excel in.

Try fixing before flicking.

Before you flick anything in your business, if it really is important to you, do have a solid go at fixing it before flicking it. Flicking a product or service is really the last resort, when you’ve decided it’s not worth the effort and the effort is better invested in a new product or service.

TAKE ACTION:
Are you measuring the performance of each of your major products and services? If those measures show any of the signals above, feel excited because you’ve just taken the first step to making your business stronger! Then choose what to fix, or if it’s obvious, what to flick.

Stacey Barr is a specialist in performance measurement, helping micro and small business owners to move their business results from where they are, to where they want them to be, using powerful, transformational measures. To grab your free copy of Stacey’s Special Report “7 Clues to Measure What Matters In Micro & Small Business”, visit www.staceybarr.com/smallbusiness.

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