The Fierce Business Babe Podcast Ep 132: Your Quarterly Business Audits
Today, we are going to be taking a walk through a few of the quarterly business audits that we actually do in our business to help give you and idea of what you could potentially start auditing and how to implement these into your business to reach your goals.
Your Quarterly Business Audits
By: Melissa Lin
Today, we are going to be taking a walk through a few of the quarterly business audits that we actually do in our business to help give you an idea of what you could potentially start auditing. You know, new ways, new perspectives, to be looking at your business each quarter. Now, we are always taking a look at how things can be improved. I always want a great pulse on how the business is doing. So this is definitely an important item that my team and I focus on at least once per quarter. We actually have some bigger audits that we do annually and biannually inside the business, but today I want to start with the quarterly audits.
Okay, here we go. Today, It's all about audits. We're going to go into the insights of the audits and the big audits that we really do that really cover the insides of the business. How is the business doing right now? We look at our goals versus our actuals. We look at launch numbers with launch audits, how our launches performed and so much more. Again, take anything that I say and really use those as inspiration for your business. If something that you hear today is like, "Oh, that is something that I'd love to incorporate," please add it into your business. All of these items were things that I really wish I would have started doing much earlier in my business.
Our Overall Business Goals
So the first audit that I really want to get into is goal audits that we like to do in our business. This is just an overall business goals audit. So every single year we do this quarterly and then before the year begins, we always create our goals for the year. Our big business goals around income and the impact and the reach that we want to really create that year.
So we usually always have it mapped out in our Asana so the team can see what some of these numbers are and what we're really striving to look at and go and move forward to. We review all of these numbers every single week during our company metric review. We usually do that on Friday depending if I'm traveling or whatnot. It's something that I just love doing on Friday, kind of wrapping the week up with company metrics. I know definitely a nerd and data, analytical math girl at heart. That's the engineer in me speaking. So we're always looking at the business goals and inside of our Asana, for example, we've got our business goals mapped out, and so we have each quarter mapped out and then we dive even deeper into each month. This is to really make sure that we're staying on track. We have a KPI dashboard that we're always reviewing as part of our company metrics that we review on Fridays, but the business goals versus actuals, we're looking at that usually in some type of spreadsheet or in Asana, sometimes it's in both, depending on what meeting we're at. But we'll look at, you know, these are the numbers we wanted to hit. For example, X amount of people into this program or x course sales and the actuals that actually happened over that last quarter.
Then, we'll dive into what worked, what didn't work, why did we not reach our goals, why didn't that hit that income or that impact? What went well, what did work? Well, I know we just said that, but those are the big things that we really start to look at. We really focus on the gap as well. So if we're off by 20%, well, why was that? Did we not get in front of enough people? Did something that was unexpected happen? Back in January, our Facebook ads account went down. So that was very unexpected. So we had to pivot pretty quickly. This helps us really determine what the gap is and what we can do to prevent some of those gaps in the future.
So again, our business goals that we've always got; the income goals we're looking for, the impact, this is the reach we want to create. We're always looking at the numbers, the numbers in your business truly tell you a story on how things are going and I always want to have a pulse on how the business is doing. So overall business goals. It's one of the big audits that we do. And I would say we actually do that more than just quarterly it's part of our weekly company metrics review.
Big Program Audit
Now, the second audit that we do is a big program audit and we do this quarterly. Every single quarter, we go into our programs that we have running at the time and we do an audit to see how things are going. What's working, what's not working. We check out client performance, how often our clients are checking into the course hub, how far into the course are they getting before they're finishing the program, are they completing the course information before the end of the program? What do some of those numbers look like? Do things in the program need to be updated?
Social media is always changing. There's always new content. So every quarter we're taking a look at our programs and asking ourselves, okay, what needs to be improved? What can we update? Because we do give our clients lifetime access and access to all future updates in any of our programs and courses. So we're always looking at the program audits to improve. What can be improved because there's always room for improvement and maybe what would we like to shift? Maybe we tried something new one-year and we just weren’t too happy with some of those results. So maybe you want to shift and try something new, right? Things are always changing in the online space. So we do get to experiment once in a while. You know, we can't necessarily always keep things the same and that's what is exciting and also can be a little nerve wracking for some, right, If we're not used to looking at some of these trends and seeing what's working and what's not working inside of the business and also outside of the business and the day to day social media. So we always look at our programs and we audit our programs quarterly.
Systems Audit
Then, the next big audit we do, we actually have a few sub audits for this big audit, is a systems audit. So we have been growing and building our systems over the years. So what we do is we'll take a look at a specific system that we have and check to see what worked and what didn't work. Did anything seem to break over the quarter? If yes, which it does happen in businesses from time to time, then we know we get to make a few adjustments to fill the gap, to prevent it from happening again. Right?
So for example, one of our system audits we do is our sales process. How smooth did it run? If we're looking at one of our hands off sales processes, where we have, you know, a freebie pushed through to a course sale. How did that run? Did some of our e-mails not get sent out? Was there some kind of bug in our automation system? You know, did everybody get enrolled smoothly into the course hub with all of the systems that we have in place? So that is just one example, but we're looking at everything inside of this system. What's going well? Is there anything else that we can improve? Right.
Most of the things that we're doing, for example, in the sales process can be hands off and automated, not everything, but most, and we're always taking a look at, okay, is this the best use of our time? Is this the most efficient thing we can do in the business? How can we improve this? We're Always looking at that, because again, there's always room for improvements. We're always doing some type of system audit every single quarter as usually a sales system audit and then also a content marketing system audit, because there were two, two big systems in our business at the moment.
Quarterly Goals
The next big audit that we do is our quarterly goals. So again, we've, chatted about kind of an overall business goal audit of what's happening in the business. What's the pulse? How close are we? How close are we to our goals this quarter? You know, if, for example, we have, let's say you have an overall goal of a hundred thousand to six figures for the year. If you're at $10,000 for the first quarter, we know that we get to ramp things up over quarter two, three and four. They usually do over the year. Usually Q2 is a little bigger, Q3 is a little bigger than that, and then Q4 is usually the biggest, just because as the year goes on, your sales tend to ramp up as well. Not always, not cookie cutter, but it's definitely a trend that I have seen and so have a lot of entrepreneurs. So we talked about that, program audits inside of your own program. So definitely think about, if you're not doing this yet, think about it. It doesn't have to necessarily be every single quarter, but, think about doing some type of program audit in your program, right? Are you asking your clients for feedback in some type of post-program survey? Do some type of audit for the internal programs that you know, what that pulse is of the program and what you may want to improve, work on, etc.
Customer Service Audits
The next one I want to talk about is customer service audits. So we dive into a lot of the things in our support email. So what we like to do during our customer service audits is dive into some of the metrics from our support email. You might be thinking to yourself and asking, "Melissa, how in the world are you grabbing metrics from your support email? Like, what does that even look like?" So, we have a team member inside of our support email every single day, responding to client questions. Typically the questions are regarding technical support. So, you know, updating cards for payments and things like that, we also receive emails from potential clients asking questions about which program would be the best fit for them, that type of thing. So we're always grabbing, you know, the biggest questions, the most commonly asked questions, and we're always grabbing metrics as well. So what was our response time to our clients? What was our response time to potential clients? Our goal is to always hit a 24 hour response time. It's kind of like, a while back and they could still be doing this, fast food restaurants and chains as well, where you'd go through the drive through and like the timer would start and their goal was to get your food out to you in like 60 seconds or 90 seconds or less, that's the response time. That's the delivery time.
So for us, we want to get back to our clients and potential clients in our support inbox within 24 hours. So when I mean support inbox, if somebody has a question, they email my team at support@themelissalin.com. So we're always grabbing some of those numbers and wanting to take a look at, okay, again, what's working, what's not working? What can we tweak? You know, what templates can we create for our support email inbox so that we can create those faster response times to get back to everybody a little bit quicker. There are definitely some softwares that you can implement into your email service, depending on what platform you're using, but there are some that you can add in to grab some of these metrics for you and really give you and your business a great idea on what some of these are for you. What some of these numbers are for your customer service audits. If this is something that you'd be interested in taking a look at and seeing where you can improve in your business.
So for example, let's say that last quarter, we had a few clients email our support email, and show that they had issues booking their coaching calls. What we can do is do a deeper dive into this and find the issue. If it wasn't fixed previously, you know, when it actually happened in live time, then we can go in now and really take a deep look at, okay, what was the root of this problem, and how can we prevent it from happening again? You know, if potential clients are having the same question over and over and over about something about our programs. That's potentially something we could add to our sales page so that they're not having that question over and over and over. So there's definitely a lot that these audits can tell you when it comes to your business.
Launch Audits
Now, I want to go into launch audits for you and your business. So we are always, and I mean always, looking at numbers in the business, because I truly believe the numbers in your business tell you a story. So we do launch audits and post-launch audits definitely every quarter and we're heavily looking at numbers during our launch as well, all of these metrics. So some of the things we look at, for example, during a launch audit are the metrics. We look at the metrics from this launch and compare it to a previous launch. If it's the same program launch, we look at what worked, what didn't work. Some of those metrics that we look at are on site views, sales page views, checkout link clicks when we're sending out launch emails. We take a look at, okay, these were our email open rates this launch, these are the click rates, these are the conversions. So this is how many actually purchased. So we're looking at all of those numbers so that we know what's working and what's not working and where there's opportunity for us to improve in our next launch. Numbers tell you so so much, right?
For example, if you're in the middle of a launch right now, and if you're not sure, kind of how the launch is going, take a look at some of your numbers. Something that I tell my clients and support my clients with as well is, you know, during a launch, a lot of the times, if we're not seeing all the sales come in, every single day, we start to get inside of our heads and tell ourselves a story of, well, it's not working the sales aren't coming in. I'm not getting sales every single day. This launch is not working. In reality, things are working. Go and take a look at your numbers, go and take a look at how many people are actually clicking your sales page. How many people are clicking the application page, right? These tell you so much. If people aren't converting from the sales page to the checkout link, then that tells us that we could potentially make some improvements on your sales page, right? If people are going to the checkout, but then not completing it, that tells you a lot as well. If you're taking a look at some of your Instagram metrics, for the day, you know, let's say that you looked at yesterday's metrics, you didn't promote or pitch or do anything on Instagram stories yesterday, but you did a mini training today and some of those metrics that you're looking at improved, then, you know, okay, when I do X, then this is going to happen. So knowing those numbers are definitely going to tell you something. I guarantee if you do a mini training on Instagram stories today and then pitch your offer, you will see higher click rates onto your sales page than you did yesterday, If you didn't do that yesterday.
So this was an overview of a few of the audits that we do every quarter in our business. Then we do have a few additional audits that we like to do bi-annually as well in the business if this is something that you would like to dive in deeper into and even see what some of the templates look like, we teach our clients how to do this in our programs.Whether it's in the business, on the business, right? Those program audits, those launch audits and what that really looks like the backend of our Asana when it comes to some of the tracking we do in our KPI dashboard where we really house everything when it comes to company metrics. We also use Airtable for that, at the moment, but we share all of that with our clients. So if you're wanting a deeper dive, go ahead, send me a message over on Instagram @Themelissalin. We can definitely have a chat about the different systems that you have in your business right now, or the different audits you're doing, if you are doing any of these audits at the moment, and I can see where I can best support you with adding a few more of these audits into your business. I do hope that you enjoyed and learned something new today with the different audits that we do throughout the year. Again, I am so excited to support you.
Thank you for hanging out with me today. I'm always going to be your biggest cheerleader. So you taking time out of your day to hang with me, truly means the world to me. I'll see you next time.
Topics we cover include:
Our Overall Business Goals
Program Audits
Systems Audit
Quarterly Goals
Customer Service Audits
And so much more!
Times to check out:
(6:13) Overall Business Goals
(9:20) Our Big Programs
(11:06) Systems
(13:05) Quarterly Goals
(14:31) Customer Service
FREEBIES:
4 Step Training to Start & Scale Your Online Coaching Business:
https://melissalincoaching.lpages.co/4-steps-to-starting-a-successful-coaching-business
Quiz: Your Next Business Strategy:
https://www.themelissalin.com/quiz
WORK WITH MELISSA:
Are you ready to take your online coaching business to the NEXT level? Have you been wanting to start coaching, finally start making a full time income doing what you love? The Fierce Business Academy might be the right fit for you! Head to the link below for more details and to hop on the waitlist!
The Fierce Business Academy:
https://www.themelissalin.com/academy
The 6 Figure Fierce Business Mastermind:
https://www.themelissalin.com/mastermind
The Caption Capsule
https://www.themelissalin.com/captioncapsule
Promo Code: PODCAST to save $$$ on The Caption Capsule!
Find me on social media for more daily content!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themelissalin/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melissa.lin.180410
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/fiercebusinessbabes/
Fierce Business Academy: https://www.themelissalin.com/academy