Revenue trends show what’s working. Learn more in our series Getting Started with Biz Intel.

Open any app or streaming service, and you’ll discover what’s trending. 

On Twitter, it’s a list of the most-tweeted-about people, places, or things. On Netflix, it’s the most-viewed shows from the past week. On Amazon, it’s the top-selling books (plus a million other products).

Trends tell us what’s hot. And what’s not. While trends in pop culture aren’t vital to our everyday lives, trends in your business certainly are!

When CEOs and business owners are able to properly wrangle their data, they have the power of information to guide their strategy and inform their decisions. That’s what this Getting Started with Biz Intel blog series is all about. Tracking revenue trends is just one reason why you need to lean into biz intel.

FIND YOUR REVENUE TRENDS

Every CEO and business owner knows that steady and growing revenue is the key to keeping the doors open. But you shouldn’t wait to see the results at year end. Important biz intel that will allow you to quickly pivot includes the tracking of how sales are trending from week to week, month to month, and quarter to quarter. (Bonus points for comparing this year’s trends to last year’s for those year-over-year insights.)

Tracking biz intel like revenue trends can be done right in QuickBooks. When we start working with a new client, we customize their QuickBooks file to properly report sales data then feed the data into a real-time dashboard. On any day of the week, month, or year, the dashboard shows revenue trends in chart and graph format. Biz intel like this is pure gold for decision makers. Any changes, whether positive or negative, can be detected and monitored. That means you aren’t surprised at year end because you have time to alter operations accordingly.

income trend over 12 mos

SEE THE REVENUE BEHIND YOUR REVENUE

Biz intel empowers you to make more informed and more timely decisions. That’s because tracking your revenue goes even deeper than just total dollars earned. QuickBooks allows you to customize income by revenue stream and to show expenses by internal business area. 

Let’s say you are a content creator, with revenue of $75,000 in 2022 and a $100,000 revenue goal for 2023. Biz intel can help you see which activities are most profitable and most likely to produce an extra $25,000 in revenue. You can customize your QuickBooks to split your revenue into streams:

  • Magazine Articles
  • Blog Posts
  • Social Media Posts
  • Marketing Campaigns

You can find additional biz intel by tracking each stream’s expenses, including the time invested in each activity. That will tell you which stream is the most profitable. It’s possible that you invested the most time on social media accounts, but it pays the least. If magazine articles pay the best for the time it takes to complete them, you could focus on securing more of those assignments to reach your 2023 revenue goal.

CLIENT + REVENUE DECISIONS

Tracking your revenue trends will provide you with biz intel for better decisions. But those decisions will still require plenty of courage to execute. Even for the content creator, building a specific revenue stream will require saving time and energy for certain projects which may require turning down additional work from the other streams. Taking it a step further, you may need to cancel (or not renew) contracts with current clients to make room for strategic growth. Those are scary, but needful, choices in business.

I’ve long appreciated and followed the advice of business expert Mike Michalowicz, author of The Pumpkin Plan: A Simple Strategy to Grow a Remarkable Business in Any Field. Michalowicz urges business owners to assess clients annually according to:

  • Total Revenue
  • The Cringe Factor (do you love/hate working with them)
  • Pay (do they pay on time)
  • Future Revenue Potential
  • Communication (how well do they communicate)
  • History
  • Referral Potential 

After completing the assessment for all clients, Michalowicz suggests axing the bottom 10% to make room for more of the sort of clients that will help you reach your goals. Can you imagine the day you no longer work with people who aren’t “your people”? This is a great activity to ensure all of your clients align with your values (see Michalowicz’s Immutable Laws).

UPWARD REVENUE TRENDS

Tracking your revenue trends will give you a wealth of biz intel. That’s why Officeheads works with successful CEOs and business owners to get the data in order and accessible. Great decisions are possible when you have all the biz intel you need to get your revenue trending up and up, year after year.

We bring your entire company into the biz intel game, using our signature 5-gear financial management approach. Reach out today to see how the team at Officeheads can put your biz intel to work for an incredible 2023.