Never Again: An Entrepreneurs Guide to Creating a Resilient Business During the COVID-19 Pandemic Recovery by Anne Gannon

Author:Anne Gannon [Gannon, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781098383480
Google: u4KKzgEACAAJ
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2021-08-24T00:06:39.054523+00:00

Setting a Time to Review

For the scorecard to be effective, it must be something you do weekly. While it might seem more efficient to fill in the last two or three weeks at a time, we have found that the biggest impact comes when you are able to record your current information each week, tracking your percentages to your targets so that you’re able to adjust what is happening in your business to align with your targets, and ultimately better results.

Had my landscaping client been tracking their cost of goods, they would have surely seen that the revenue being received barely covered cost of goods. One week it could be pushed off as timing, but if they tracked 8 to 12 weeks and saw this outcome consistently, they would have seen the truth.

Regardless of your feelings about the information you receive from the scorecard, you must keep score.

I truly believe this small exercise of keeping score can be a game changer for you and your business. And while you won’t like what you see every week, the important thing is that you will have the power in your hands to change course at any time and adapt to the most current week. And this can make all the difference.

I remember the first time we rolled this out with a client. Their business had been hit hard by the pandemic, and even though their sales were down, their best margins were lost in catering and they were up against rising protein costs.

I knew if anyone could find use in our new tool, it was these guys. The first time I met them was at a software training in New York City three weeks before the pandemic struck. I remember watching their interaction. Their group operated like a sports team—huddling during the training, talking amongst themselves, and having a singular focus on getting it right for their operations.

They knew exactly what they wanted. “We need to know where we are each week,” the owner said. “We need to have reliable data to run our business and grow.”

And then COVID-19 struck. We had been right in the middle of onboarding when the shutdowns began. I was touched that the owner reached out and personally assured me that we would continue when things came back.

Four weeks later, he called me to say they were ready.

I wanted to deliver for them. Not in the old way, but with our toolkit.

We built the forecast and the weekly scorecard. Week by week, the sheets expanded to include all the information they needed to know. They noticed that one of the main problems was the third-party delivery platforms they used for their growing take-out business. But as we tracked the percentage of delivery fees to weekly sales, we were quickly able to analyze the impact on their bottom line this shift was having. And it was significant.

Instantly we were able to build projections for the next week based on these trends, and see that they needed to raise their prices.

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