The Wealth Spa

How Much Money Are You Leaving on the Table?

Guest post by Sandra P. Martini, The Automatic Business Coach

The majority of small business owners work their tail off. They spend thousands of dollars attending workshops and seminars convinced that the latest one will solve their problems or they’ll meet *the* client they’ve dreamed of; they spend hours upon hours working in their business wondering why the phone’s not ringing and they’ve produced information products and now wonder why they’re not “waking up to find they’ve made money”.

Do any, or all, of the above describe you?

If so, you are working hard, but not smart. You don’t have a consistent system in place to determine which of your activities are worthwhile and productive as opposed simply keeping you busy and wasting your money.

The following is just a few of the business statistics you MUST track in order to succeed:

1. Your sales — both number and amount.

How much money did you bring in this month, this week, today and what did they purchase?

How many items IN TOTAL were purchased?

For example, I offer coaching services and also sell information products for home study. It’s important to know what percentage of sales comes from the different products or services you offer.

2. Your UNIQUE website visitors.

How many unique visitors came to your website this week or month?

Note that this is not the number of “hits” which is a much greater figure. You want to know specifically how many UNIQUE people came and visited your site and any website tracker can tell you this.

3. Your new ezine/email newsletter subscribers.

How many people signed up for your ezine or email newsletter this week?

4. Your conversion rates.

Here’s where we bring a little math into the picture:

* Sales Conversion Rate: Divide your total sales number by the number of unique website visitors.

For example: if you had 100 unique people visit your website and you sold 70 items, your sales conversion rate is 70% (70 sales/100 unique visitors).

* Ezine Conversion Rate: Divide your total new ezine subscribers by the number of unique website visitors.

This will tell you how effective your website or opt-in box is with respect to getting new subscribers.

* Value Per Visitor: Divide the total money you made in a given week (or month) by the number of unique website visitors for that same period.

You now know how much each unique visitor is worth you.

5. Your expenses.

Not only do you need to track how much money is coming in, but how much is going out.

What percentage of your gross income goes out in fixed overhead expenses each month? Is there anything you can do to reduce this number without sacrificing service?

The above are just a few of the key metrics you must know in order to gauge what is/is not working in your business. Without tracking, you can’t improve your methods AND your income!

I’ve combined all of the above (and a few more) into a “Strategic Marketing Report” which my team prepares and sends to me each Monday morning - I never have to think about it and getting it on a consistent schedule allows me to make the best decisions for my business on an ongoing basis.

My Request to You

I ask that you know, at a minimum, your website statistics and, if you don’t currently know how to get this information, to contact your webmaster as most hosting sites include this as part of the package.

Once you know HOW to get these numbers, it’s time to put a system in place (whether you or a virtual assistant) to track these numbers on a regular basis so you can continuously improve everything you’re doing.

And if you’re feeling too overwhelmed to begin? You’ll want to learn more about “Strategic Marketing - Sandy Style” and having a customized strategic marketing action plan complete with systems for you to implement “done 4 you”.

©2008 Sandra P. Martini, The Automatic Business Coach & Mentor. Get Sandra Martini’s FREE “5 Simple Steps to Putting Your Marketing on Autopilot” e-course/audio mini-workshop and her FREE small business success how-to tips at www.SandraMartini.com

Photo courtesy of emdot on flickr.

Get complementary exclusive information about experiencing holistic wealth, the Take Control of Cash Flow Special Report, and the 7 Legal & Financial Strategies to Grow Up! Your Small Business Audio Class, by joining as a Wealth Spa Insider at The Wealth Spa

Ep. 9: Don’t Chicken Out! (What’s holding you back from success?)

The Wealth Spa Video Show Episode 9: “Don’t Chicken Out!”

Are you doing everything right, implementing all over the place, but success is just not “clicking” for you? Do you have a huge vision and wonder if it’s even possible to achieve (or if you are setting yourself up for disappointment)? Learn the one thing that may be holding you back from wealth & success.

This episode comes from my comments on stage at Ali Brown’s Online Success Blueprint Workshop in November 2008.

First Step in Making Money: Send the Paperwork to Your Worker Bees

What’s the #1 concern of small business owners?

How to manage up’s and down’s in business income each month.

What’s the #1 concern of individuals?

How to save more money & have more money available to spend on improving their lifestyle.

Either way, it’s all about managing cash flow.

Whether you put it under the category of budgeting, cash flow management, pro forma’s, financial planning, or balancing your checkbook, it all comes down to creating a system to achieve your goals by managing and strategizing the cash coming in and going out each month. On The Wealth Spa I’ve talked about the 4 Step System to Manage Cash Flow. You can use this system for your household finances, your home business, or a multi-million dollar corporation — the same universal principals apply.

The first step in managing your cash flow is to get the details out of your way. One of the details is all the paperwork and records we are required to maintain for tax purposes. I’m talking about all the documentation to support tax income and tax deductions. On the personal side, it’s salary information, investment records (both purchases and sales), and deduction records (i.e., property tax, mortgage interest, charitable deductions). On the business side, it’s income records (invoices and deposit slips) and expense receipts and cancelled checks.

Whether or not you use this original data to prepare your tax returns (we’ll discuss that next week), you do need to keep all of it in case you get audited. But you must not get bogged down in these details, because it dose not help you manage you cash flow.

How to Keep Records: Personal records may be kept in files by year, along with the tax return for that year. Business records may be kept in 4 monthly expanding files — one for income, one for deposit slips, one for cancelled checks, and one for receipts. You may combine travel, automobile expenses, entertainment, and dining records with the receipts (just write notes directly on the back of the receipt), or keep logs in a separate file or journal - whatever is easier for you.

You can keep these documents as electronic files. But, I find that scanning the documents takes more time then throwing them into files. And who cares about having a pdf of a Starbucks’ receipt from 1998 on your computer?

How to Maintain Records: If at all possible, delegate to your Worker Bees! Have your Virtual Assistant, Personal Assistant, Professional Organizer, spouse, responsible teenager, stay-at-home-mom neighbor, or babysitter take over this job. (And yes, not only rich people have VA’s and PA’s - you can get someone for just 2 hours a week.) All they need to do is sort the paper by year or month, label the files, and stick the documents into the files. There is no reason for you to do it, except to manage that it gets done regularly (at least monthly).

The Wealth Spa Minute

Do you have a pile of receipts? Cancelled checks? Notes and logs? Stop dealing with this paper and get it off your desk into a simple expandable file. Even better - delegate this task to your Virtual Assistant or Personal Assistant.

Ep #66 Finding Your Why

Elizabeth speaks to The Barefoot Executive, Carrie Wilkerson about Finding Your Why.

Elizabeth and Carrie talk about how they made their transitions into working from home, how working from home brings to you so many changes and how there really is no balance…it’s life happening!

Elizabeth then answers a listener question about avoiding networking overwhelm from your attendance at conferences or seminars and how to get the most out of the information, ideas and acquaintances you’ve made. Elizabeth then shares her Entrepreneur’s Success Tip of the Week: Listening to Your Intuition within Your Business.

To learn about Carrie and to receive her free downloadable presentation on Finding Your Why visit The Barefoot Executive.

Click Here to Download the Show!

Shameless Self-Promotion Post for November

Here’s my theory — this Online Magazine is not the place to constantly ping you with everything going on in my life and business. But, since I’m giving you tons of great free content here (and some of you do care about my stuff), each month I’m going to post one big self-promotion feast of a post. So here’s your November self-promotion fix.

Just Launched

The Money Tree System: How to Attract More Money in Just 15 Minutes per Week

The Money Tree System is a step-by-step method to get over your fears about your small business finances, manage the income and expenses of your business, and effortlessly attract more money to you — in just 15 minutes per week. In this program you will learn how to:

Let go of your story that your are “not a numbers person” or “not good with money.”
Let go of fear and anxiety that keeps you from getting started on managing your financials.
Get in the right frame of mind to conduct your weekly Money Meetings, so you don’t freeze up before you start.
Balance the Law of Attraction and Universal Principles with practical, action-based money management and business planning.
Know what you should be doing when you sit down to review your finances, so you’re not there just staring at the screen.
Troubleshoot your income so you know when you will have income “busts” BEFORE they start, and how to do something about any problems that may arise.
Find “hidden treasures” in your business — income that’s just waiting for you to simply cash it in.

**Special sale price until Friday November 14th at Midnight**

Watch the video (and see me after losing 15 lbs) and get more info at http://TheWealthSpa.com/MoneyTree

What’s Upcoming

The Wealth Spa Radio Show is moving to BlogTalkRadio, with our first new show on Thursday, November 20th (my birthday!) at 11:00 AM Pacific. For those of you who listen to the podcast, nothing will change. I’d love for you to call in on the first show (even if it’s just to wish me happy birthday!).

The Wealth Spa Affiliate Program will re-launch in late November, to promote affiliates for The Money Tree System as well as the upcoming campaign for Grow Up! Strategies. FYI - we pay 30% commission and 5% downline, plus higher commissions for joint ventures and strategic partners. More information coming soon.

Grow Up! Strategies book campaign will go live in December (target date Tuesday December 6th). Yes, a weird time to launch a book but perhaps, in a contrarian way of thinking, no one else will be launching a big campaign that week so it will be the perfect time. In late November I’ll be approaching interested partners in joining for this amazon.com-type campaign.

The Wealth Spa Video Show will be re-launching in November, mostly because I finally bought real professional lighting and backgrounds. We will now be posting new shows on a regular schedule — I may even create a production calendar, imagine that!

The Wealth Spa

How Much Money Are You Leaving on the Table?

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Ep. 9: Don’t Chicken Out! (What’s holding you back from success?)

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First Step in Making Money: Send the Paperwork to Your Worker Bees

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Ep #66 Finding Your Why

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