It’s important to measure everything in your business to make sure you are maximizing every opportunity that’s presented to you.

Here are three areas in your business you need to benchmark or measure – sales calls, technology, time.

Sales calls should be measured and analyzed constantly. You can do this by creating something as simple as an excel spreadsheet to track your results. Create columns for calls made, people talked to, proposals sent, closed deals, etc. Just create something that works for you so you can track your numbers. Keep it simple.

How many visitors are you getting to your website every day? Are there specific times or days of the week that are busier than others? Is one of your pages getting more traffic than any of the others? Google Analytics will give you all this information and more. You can benchmark the performance of your website just like every other aspect of your business.

How many hits are you getting on your social media? There are several tools you can use to measure your social media. For example, you can measure your Facebook Page results by using Facebook Insights. Go to your Facebook Page and on the right side you can click on View Insights. Or go to Facebook Help and do a search on Insights.

Many times a lack of results or lack of consistent income in a business can be traced back to poor time management. There is nothing more important in your business than being aware of how you are spending your time and making sure you are spending enough of your time on the tasks that will grow your business and make money. Keep track of how you are spending your time and hours worked for a few weeks. This will be a real eye-opener.

You cannot stay in business without benchmarking and measuring every aspect of your business. If it can’t be measured, then you may not need to do it.

Consumer buying patterns have not changed that much over the years. But the way people approach the buying process, and the tools they have available for researching their purchase before they buy have changed dramatically.

Awareness of your product or service is the first part of the buying process. So make sure you are making your target market aware that you exist. It is your responsibility to raise awareness in the marketplace, and to prove that you are the best person to deliver a particular product or service. You can do this through networking, direct mail, advertising, cold calling, speaking, your website, and various other means. You just have to find the ones that work best for you and your business.

The research part of the process is where the most dramatic changes have taken place. There are so many tools available for people to use for researching your product or service. They can use social media, user reviews on sites like Amazon.com, and other similar tools. And all of these tools have increased the effectiveness of word-of-mouth referrals because everyone has free access to so much information.

As the buyer does their research it is easier than ever to comparison shop to find the best price and best value using the same tools mentioned above.

The final step of the process is for them to shop and make their purchase. You should make the process of shopping and making the purchase as streamlined and easy for the customer as possible, especially on your website. It’s too easy for someone to click away from your web page.

So make sure you have all the bases covered – awareness, research, comparison, shop, and purchase.

It’s more important than ever that you make information freely available so potential purchasers of your product or service can make the most informed decision possible. We live in an age of total transparency. So be real. The more authentic and transparent you are, the higher your chances of making the sale.

There are three areas of your business that have to be working for you to move forward in your business: marketing, business development, digital media.

Marketing includes networking, direct mail, advertising, writing sales copy, speaking.

Business development includes things like sales, prospecting, lead generation, follow-up, list building.

Digital media is anything you do online. Social media, pay-per-click advertising, video, WordPress website, QR Codes, and article marketing will fall under this category.

You have to be doing all of these things every day if you want your business to grow.

It’s so easy to let certain aspects of your business fall by the wayside if something starts to become difficult or too time consuming. But you have to be aware of each of these areas and your status in each of these areas if you want to grow your business and make more money.

I see marketing and digital media as more passive ways to grow your business while the strategies under business development require a more aggressive approach.

That is why business development is sometimes disregarded. It’s an area where some people tend to procrastinate. It’s the hard stuff because you actually have to pick up the phone to call someone or follow-up with a potential client. Be willing to do the hard stuff.

If you learn to focus on all three areas – marketing, business development, digital media – every day, you will reap the rewards.

Is customer service that hard?

I stopped by McDonald’s recently to get a cup of coffee. I told the person at the register what I wanted. He took my money and then took orders from the next three people. Then he proceeded to help fill their orders. After their orders were filled, I asked if I could get my cup of coffee.

He seemed frustrated that I asked him to do such a difficult task and poured me a half cup of coffee. One half of a cup of coffee!!! He then went to the next customer to take their order. So I stood in line to see if he could continue to fill my cup. When I got to the front of the line, he poured more coffee in the cup. Now it was close to 3/4 full. He put it in front of me with no apology and without saying a word. He didn’t ask if I needed anything else. Nothing. He then proceeded to get the next customer’s order.

They weren’t very busy. He actually had time to talk to someone who knew his parents. But he could not fill one cup of coffee for me.

How can this be so hard? This is just one example of bad customer service with no apologies.

I understand the pay at McDonald’s is not that great and the work is not easy sometimes. But if you don’t want to do it. Get another job or do something else.

Also had a problem with my air-conditioner. The air-conditioning repair person told me they would be at my home between 2:00 PM and 4:00 PM on Friday. They arrived at 7:30 PM.

This type of customer experience happens all the time. Why has this become acceptable behavior in our society?

What is the customer experience for people who purchase your product or service? Are you doing everything you can to make sure everybody gets what they need?

We all fall short sometimes. If you deal with enough clients, you will eventually have issues because the reality is, you can’t please everyone.

But the important thing is how you handle these issues. Are you keeping the communication open so you take care of any issues your clients may have as quickly as possible in a professional way? Do you have empathy for their situation?

Every customer is not going to be satisfied, but even a dissatisfied customer can become a loyal customer if you keep the communication lines open and handle any issues with empathy and professionalism. Doing this will differentiate you from almost everyone else out there and keep your customers loyal to you, your product, and your service.

I would love to hear your thought on this.