Just as we coach our clients to measure their goals for success, we too must have our own goals for business, otherwise it’s never going to evolve. Even if you are financially content with your current client load or business, it is wise to have a means of measurement to track year over year status and growth. According to IHRSA, the failure rate of health and fitness businesses is 81% in their first year and 50% of those remaining won’t last longer than 5 years.
These statistics are the best reason why it’s important to have a professional or business scorecard that will help you plan and execute on strategy for growth. This is a need whether you are a solopreneur or you own a training facility with staff. By having a scorecard in place you are able to create accountability for yourself and your team towards KPIs (key performance indicators).
Some examples of things you could track on your scorecard are:
- Financial management: revenue, sales tracking, margin and cash flows.
- Customer-based metrics such as Net Promoter Score, referral rate, conversion rates and average order value (Example: your average customer value per month).
- Employee productivity metrics to track turnover, effectiveness and absenteeism.
- Organizational development: do you have the bandwidth or the team to meet your goals?
- Mission metrics to keep you on track for your overarching mission. For example at PhysioFit, ours is to put 25 kids through school over the next 6 years in Kenya. Yours may be attached to more of a local focus like sponsoring kids for camps. Whatever the case, make it something that your clients can get on board with.
When implementing your scorecard, keep in mind the overarching purpose is to have alignment, accountability and a method to benchmark trends and successes. Your scorecard, similar to your monthly P&L review, can often be an early warning sign that something is off. This will ultimately allow you the opportunity to identify variations from the target KPIs and reroute your course. Whatever method you use to track business success, find one that works for your specific business and use it year over year to gather more data. Having access to this information will make it much easier to make critical decisions. Remember, similar to our workouts… consistency is key.
Brandi Binkley has been an Exercise Physiologist for 19 years. She has served as a consultant to the Department of Defense, Alpha Warrior, Technogym, and multiple healthcare companies. Brandi also spends her time serving on the board for End Slavery TN, Tennessee State NSCA Advisory, C12, and The Todd Durkin Mastermind.
