A few years ago we started focusing on our break-even number. We identified that number as the amount of new/new revenue we would need on a daily basis to hit our growth goal. We anticipated our residual income would be flat, but factored in the loss of any large accounts that occurred on a weekly basis. We tracked this daily and every person in the company knew if we were hitting goal.

So how do you determine your break-even number? First, analyze your revenues. Are you a $1.2 million revenue firm? Excellent: your monthly number is $100,000, your weekly is $25,000, and your daily number is $5,000. Tracking your daily orders or transactions using most software solutions is an easy task these days. Set up a procedure that at 3:30 p.m. each day sends the “number” to everybody in the company to know how your company is doing.

That's step one, but we took it one step further. Because our revenues are flat from year to year, we wanted to focus on a growth goal of 12 percent. We took our annual revenue times a 1.12 factor and then broke down our 12 percent growth over a 12-month period. I would track the financials on a monthly basis to ensure that we were on track in a “big picture” way, but I empowered one young man in our company to tally our daily sales and report “our number.”