• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Submissions
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Aug 16, 2022
  • Startup
    • Creating a Plan
    • Funding a Startup
    • Franchise Center
    • Getting Your Office Ready
    • Making Your Business Official
    • Marketing Your New Business
    • Personal Readiness
  • Run & Grow
    • Customer Service
    • Human Resources
    • Innovation
    • Legal
    • Operations
    • Risk Management
  • Leadership
    • Best Practices
    • Communication
    • Green Initiatives
    • Open Culture
    • Strategic Planning
    • People Skills
  • Sales & Marketing
    • Advertising and Lead Generation
    • Marketing Innovations
    • Marketing Plans
    • Online Marketing
    • Relationships
    • Sales Activities
  • Finance
    • Budgeting and Personal Finance
    • Payments and Collections
    • Tax and Accounting
    • Pricing Strategy
    • Working with Investors
    • Working with Lenders
  • Tech
    • eCommerce
    • Hardware
    • Software
    • Security
    • Tech Reviews
    • Telecom
  • Shop

SmallBizClub

Helping You Succeed

Home / Leadership / Strategic Planning / 7 Indicators of Business Traction You Should Celebrate
7 Indicators of Business Traction You Should Celebrate

7 Indicators of Business Traction You Should Celebrate

2176 Views

Jan 18, 2016 By Marty Zwilling

Every entrepreneur is quick to tell friends and potential investors about his or her vision of changing the world, about all the customers who have expressed an interest, and about all the other investors who are lining up to get a piece of the action. As an angel investor, I really prefer to hear evidence of credible traction today, not how great things could be in the future.

As a serious entrepreneur, you have more invested than any outsider, so you should be looking for the same evidence and not believing your own hype. Yet I hear the same story so often that I wonder if entrepreneurs really understand what they should be celebrating, and how to measure their progress against these expectations:

  1. How many real customers do you have today? Beta customers, free signups, customers expressing interest and your family and friends don’t count. You should be counting only those people who fit your target customer demographic and paid full price for the product or service, without any prior connection to you or the business.
  2. Is your customer-acquisition rate accelerating? Especially for free or freemium products, the rate of new signups is critical. Disregard that initial surge that might have come from early adopters or a huge initial marketing effort. If the ongoing acquisition rate is slow, and not trending upward, it may be time for a pivot or a reality check for your targets.
  3. Are you penetrating or skimming your target segment? Some entrepreneurs are convinced that they have real traction when in fact they are only getting new customers from expansion to new geographies, segments or products. This is not a viable long-term strategy. Penetration levels in pilots below 1 percent may not indicate traction.
  4. Is revenue per customer or transaction size increasing? Real traction is usually indicated if the average transaction size or rate per customer is increasing, and customer lifetime value (CLV) in increasing. This indicates real customer loyalty, rather than a predominance of test buys or high customer turnover. Margins should be increasing.
  5. Is customer acquisition cost going down? As customer acceptance and awareness goes up, the cost and time to acquire new customers (CAC) will come down. The formula is a simple one: dividing the total costs associated with acquisition by total new customers, within a specific time period. Increasing costs means you are losing traction.
  6. What is your acceptance by major consumer outlets? Featured visibility or signed contracts with name brand players and distributors, such as Home Depot or Amazon, almost always indicate traction. Each of these should be celebrated, but can also test your scalability due to high inventory requirements, slow payables and harsh terms.
  7. Are you reviewed positively by online media and industry analysts? It’s never too early to build relationships with industry analysts, influential blogs and the media. In this arena, it’s possible to show real traction even before you ship a product through heightened anticipation and pre-orders.

In the final evaluation, traction is the key driver for your business valuation, and is needed to attract investors, partners or a public stock offering. Your challenge as an entrepreneur is to generate traction and at the same time choose the right metrics to quantify and sell that traction to your team and to outsiders. For all practical purposes, if you can’t or don’t measure it, it doesn’t exist.

Related Article: No Blunders! Avoid These 5 Startup Mistakes

Many entrepreneurs feel they need to spend more money to increase traction. In fact, the right solution in the right market will get traction at minimal cost, so that should be your target. Traction “purchased” by a huge marketing spend may indicate a business that is not sustainable in the long term. Smart investors and acquisition candidates heavily discount these efforts.

While the traction term may be overused by investors, it is a key concept that every entrepreneur should understand for assessing their own valuation and the level of uptake by customers that they are seeing on their business. Once a business is beyond the idea stage, it’s time to spend less time on vision, and more time on traction. What traction have you celebrated lately?

Filed Under: Strategic Planning Tagged With: Setting Goals, Startups

Source: Startup Professionals

Marty Zwilling

Marty Zwilling

Marty Zwilling is the Founder and CEO of Startup Professionals, a company that provides products and services to startup founders and small business owners. Marty has been published on Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Huffington Post, Gust, and Young Entrepreneur. He writes a daily blog for entrepreneurs, and dispenses advice on the subject of startups to a large online audience of over 225,000 Twitter followers. He is an Advisory Board Member for multiple startups; ATIF Angels Selection Committee; and Entrepreneur in Residence at ASU and Thunderbird School of Global Management. Follow Marty on Twitter @StartupPro or Circle him on Google+.

Related Posts

  • Startup Investment: What’s The Secret to Investing in the Startup World?
  • Here’s What To Do If Your Small Business Is Tanking
  • 6 Reasons Why Business Owners Don’t Set Goals

Primary Sidebar

Random

4 Tips to Keep Your Law Firm Finances On Track

Aug 16, 2022 By Lynn Ruthe

5-signs-you-need-to-revamp-your-inventory-management

5 Easy Ways To Track and Manage Your Inventory

Aug 16, 2022 By Ryan Kidman

5-things-you-should-expect-from-your-business-broker

These Are the 6 Important Factors When Selecting a Business Financing Broker

Aug 15, 2022 By SmallBizClub

Why and How to Align Your Team Through Brand Values

Aug 11, 2022 By Luke Britton

Why Businesses Should Treat Employee Burnout as a Risk Management Issue

Aug 11, 2022 By Andrew Deen

Footer

About Us

Small Biz Club is the premier destination for small business owners and entrepreneurs. To succeed in business, you have to constantly learn about new things, evaluate what you’re doing, and look for ways to improve—that’s what we’re here to help you do.

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2022 by Tarkenton Institute, Inc. All Rights Reserved | Terms | Privacy