Recently I gave a webinar on ways to reduce expenses and increase income. One of my long-time favorite tips is what I simply call “track back”. 

If you get a new client, where did he/she come from? And where did that come from? And on and on until you can’t go backward anymore. 

Example: 

Let’s say Joan Brown reached out to become my newest client. 

“how did you hear about me?”  

“my friend Sherry highly recommended you”. 

Most business owners, when they track how a client heard of them in their CRM, would stop there. Not me. 

I have to stop and remember how I met Sherry. It was at an event, and that event was hosted by an organization I’m a member of.  

So in my CRM, I have created custom fields for referral source 1, referral source 2, and even referral source 3. 

Why bother? 

Now I know that when my membership renewal notice comes up for that organization, I can look at my CRM and see how many clients I can trace back to that membership. It’s all about the Return on Investment. 

On the other hand, if I did a search for another organization’s name in my CRM under the referral fields and found that I’ve been paying for a membership for 2 or 3 years and cannot attribute a single positive financial result from that membership, guess what renewal notice is going in the trash? 

As a business owner, you make decisions every single day. Sometimes dozens and sometimes even hundreds of decisions. Typically we don’t have a whole data research library available to us to help us decide on the answer.  

What we do have in our power is keeping track of where the money comes from. Whether you use a CRM, or spreadsheet, or a Word doc or even post it notes, ask yourself, what choices did I make that are ultimately responsible for this new customer?  

As I mentioned, I’ve been doing this for years. I also track what type of activity the client came from: was it networking? Was it a sponsorship? Was it a speaking engagement?  

That helps in deciding on future networking, sponsorship and presentation opportunities to seek. 

Track back! It’s simple, makes so much sense and can save you a TON of money! 

Start today and let me know what you’ve uncovered! 

Susana Fonticoba is the founder of Clear Path Strategy LLC. She  is a Certified Business Growth Strategist  and helps business owners to explore first hand the need for discovering, designing and delivering a Clear Path to Small Business Success with a Professional, a Plan, and a Process.  Learn more at  https://clearpathstrategy.com/