It’s another early morning as you walk through the shop. First shift is already working, and you can hear the hum of production in the background. The last few weeks have been decent relative to orders and the sales keep coming in. All in all, the business has been profitable. That all sounds pretty good from the outside, but why haven’t you been sleeping well?
In the back of your mind, you know something isn’t quite right. Things have been a little bit harder to manage lately, and decisions among the team seem to linger. Your meetings seem less productive, and while you are hitting your numbers, growth has slowed and the margins have gotten a bit tighter. And while everyone is working hard, it just doesn’t seem like you’re playing to your potential.
As you prepare for the Monday morning leadership meeting, those issues are still on your mind. Here are four questions that need to be answered at the meeting.
- Are We Winning New Business?
- Are We Serving Customers Exceptionally?
- Are We Running the Business Efficiently?
- Are We Building a Stronger Organization?
These are four key questions taken from The Philie Framework.TM In this post, I’ll begin with “Are we winning new business?” And over the next several weeks, I’ll take on each of these additional questions and share the details that I think could be useful to any print company CEO.
Are We Winning New Business?
Here are the things that I want to know, that tell me how well our sales engine is working. In this area, I’m more focused on leading indicators than last month’s sales results.
Leading indicators like how many new opportunities were closed, how many new opportunities were created, how many meaningful conversations did we have with either new prospects or existing relationships that we can go deeper and wider with. What’s in the pipeline?
Sales is hard and takes a long time. No argument here. That said, I just want to know how we’re doing, and how is the process working. What do we have in the pipeline by sales stage, and how does that compare to our targets? The number of outstanding estimates and estimate to order conversion is important data, but it’s more of a lagging indicator – reflective of the work that was done in the past to make this happen.
The burning question that isn’t asked often enough:
“What gives us confidence that next quarter will be stronger than this one?”
Most dashboards stop with numbers, so let’s add one more section that includes three additional questions that should be asked.
The CEO’s Three Questions
Every Monday, ask yourself:
1. What surprised me last week? If nothing surprises you, either your business is incredibly predictable – or your team isn’t telling you everything.
2. What decision have I been avoiding? Delayed decisions become impediments and are often the costliest.
3. What could happen in the next 90 days that isn’t on anyone’s dashboard? That’s where you earn their paycheck.
A Closing Thought
The dashboard isn’t there to tell you what happened. Your accounting and MIS system already does that. Your dashboard should help you see what’s coming. From my experience, the companies that consistently outperform their competitors aren’t the ones with the best reports. They’re the ones whose leaders recognize problems while they’re still small and opportunities before everyone else sees them.
Numbers don’t create better decisions. Better questions do.
Mike Philie helps owners and CEOs in the Graphic communications industry validate what’s working, identify what needs to change, and create a practical path forward.
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