Learning as a barometer of success

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Bikky Khosla | 11 Dec, 2012
How do you measure success? A tricky question! As a small business owner, what probably immediately come to your mind is your balance sheet and your client base -- how much money is in the cash register, and how fast the number of your customers is growing or shrinking. Profitability and number of customers are two common barometers we all use to measure how successful we have been in our entrepreneurial ventures. This is fairly common sense. To survive or to thrive, you cannot help but take care of these things.

But I don't think profitability is everything. There are a few other metrics that I believe are crucial for entrepreneurial success, and the most important among them is learning: how much you are learning about the market, your products, your customers, etc. Of course, healthy revenue and a growing customers base are good signs, but still a loss could be around, if you fail to learn.

Many small business owners fall into this trap: after pouring their heart and soul into their business, and achieving certain level of success in terms of parameters like sales, revenue and profit, they -- in the hurry of getting complacent -- make no effort to make the best of their valuable experience: they don't bother to find out what they could have learned instead of just bagging profits or expanding the customer base.

In business, I think there is always a lot to learn about what is working for you and what is not: why some target customers are buying from you while others are not, in which areas you need improvement and how you can achieve this, what are the things that are adding value to your business and which are not, which of your efforts are successful and where you are just wasting your time, where advertising and promotion are working and where they're not -- and all those things that can help get a full enough picture on your own.

To learn from what you have done, it is always useful to divide your queries into some distinct areas, like a) products (example: what features customers have liked the most/least); b) customers (example: How did they hear about you, what problem they were seeking to solve, how they were different); c) market (example: changes that have been taking place, emerging trends, etc.; d) advertising & promotion (example: which promotional media were proved most/least effective). This approach helps to ensure success in the long run.

Success and learning are indispensable to each other, and the latter is a continuous and unending process parallel to the changing world. So, while reflecting and evaluating your progress, ask yourself how much you have learned. Having said this, I don't deny the importance of other key metrics. Revenue, client base, response to marketing efforts, customer satisfaction -- all these things matter, but don't put aside learning, which is a key determinant of success in entrepreneurship . . . and also undeniably in life.