The 30 minute weekly numbers review every expert business needs

Why weekly, and why only 30 minutes

In an expert business, problems show up in the numbers weeks before they show up in the bank account. A drop in booked calls this week is a drop in cash next month.

If you only look at revenue monthly, you find out about a leak four to six weeks after it started. By then you have paid for a month of ads into a broken funnel.

A weekly review catches it in days. Keeping it to 30 minutes is what makes it last, because a review that takes half a day gets skipped the first time you are busy.

The twelve numbers to track

You do not need a dashboard with fifty metrics. For a business selling a high value offer through calls, these twelve cover almost everything.

1. Ad spend for the week.
2. Leads, meaning new opt ins, registrations or applications.
3. Cost per lead, ad spend divided by leads.
4. Calls booked.
5. Cost per booked call.
6. Show rate, calls held divided by calls booked.
7. Close rate, sales divided by calls held.
8. New sales, the number of clients signed.
9. New revenue contracted, the total value of what was sold.
10. Cash collected, which will differ from contracted revenue if you offer payment plans.
11. Refunds and failed payments.
12. Active clients, and how many started or finished this week.

If you run webinars, add registrations and attendance. If you rely on organic content, add the number of conversations started from it.

The agenda, minute by minute

The structure matters more than the tool. Use the same agenda every week so it becomes a habit rather than a meeting you have to plan.

• Minutes 0 to 5: fill in the numbers. Ideally someone on your team, or an automation, has done this before you sit down. If not, pull them yourself.
• Minutes 5 to 15: compare. Put this week next to last week and next to your four week average. Look for anything that moved by more than about 20% either way.
• Minutes 15 to 25: pick one problem. Choose the single biggest change and ask why. Look one step upstream: if close rate fell, check whether show rate or lead quality changed first.
• Minutes 25 to 30: decide one action. One change, one owner, one date. Write it down next to the numbers so you can check it next week.

A review that ends without a decision is just reading.

A worked example

Take a consultant selling a $6,000 programme. Over the past four weeks they have averaged $2,500 a week in ad spend, 25 booked calls, a 70% show rate and a 25% close rate.

That works out at roughly 17 or 18 calls held and four sales a week. This week the sheet shows 26 calls booked but only 13 held, a show rate of 50%.

Revenue looks fine for now, because last month's sales are still being paid. But on the current trend, the consultant is on course for around three sales a week instead of four.

The one problem is obvious. The one action might be: the setter calls every new booking within an hour, starting Monday, and show rate is checked again next week.

Without the weekly review, that drop would have shown up as a slow month several weeks later, with no clear cause.

Setting it up so it actually happens

The simplest version is a spreadsheet with one row per week and one column per number. Fancy dashboards are nice, but a sheet you actually fill in beats a tool you never open.

• Pick a fixed slot. Monday morning works well because the previous week is complete and you can still act on it.
• Define each number once. Write down exactly what counts as a lead, a held call and a sale, so the figures mean the same thing every week.
• Automate what you can. Many CRMs, ad platforms and payment tools can export these figures, so the five minute fill in can shrink to nothing.
• Keep a decisions column. Recording the action and the result each week builds a history of what actually moved your numbers.

Traps to avoid

• Reacting to noise. Small numbers swing. If you held eight calls, one extra sale changes your close rate a lot. Look at the four week average before you change anything big.
• Fixing three things at once. If you change the ads, the script and the price in the same week, you will not know which one helped.
• Ignoring cash. Contracted revenue feels good. Cash collected pays the bills, and the gap between them widens quietly when payment plans start to fail.
• Skipping good weeks. The review matters most when things are going well, because that is when you find out what to do more of.

Thirty minutes a week is about 26 hours a year. Few things you do in a business will give you as much warning, for as little time.