Success is the most important thing in the world of business. If your business is successful, it means your customers are loyal and satisfied, it means you can pay your employees, yourself and generate more funds to develop your business further. It also means your ideas are effective: the confidence that motivated you to start this business has been borne out! For many founders and CEOs, the success of their business is innately bound up with their own sense of self-worth.
Today, we’re taking a look at some of the ways you can assess the success of your business.
Financial Health
One of the most important ways you can decide if your business is successful is to look at its financial side: are you making money? Are you attracting investment?
If you’re consistently turning a profit, and investors are queuing up to give you the resources to develop your business, then you have weighted reasons to feel your business is successful.
Financial health is only a part of the story though, and if you want a more nuanced understanding of your business it’s worth digging deeper. To take just one example: if you’ve been investing a lot in developing your business, launching new products, processes or more branches, you might be making less money. This doesn’t mean your business is any less successful.
Brand Health
You could argue that your brand is more important than your bank balance. Your brand is the identity that customers assign to your business that allows them to relate to it on a personal level: to make decisions about where to spend their money not based on a cold analysis of the cost of products, but on feelings like loyalty, affection and comfort. The more people your brand appeals to, the more customers you can rely on returning.
Brand tracker surveys are high valued investments. They tell you how customers rate your business for the key qualities that indicate success in your industry and, especially importantly, compares them with your competitors. This helps you see how you’re building your brand and exposes both opportunities for you to catch up to your competitors and warns you when you’re falling behind them.
A brand tracking result that shows your brand is trusted and beloved means you’ve got a secure future as a business even if your current financial situation is less than ideal. It demonstrates a desired business that people want to spend their money on and that’s the greatest success.
