Every small business has vital signs that tell you if the business is doing well or not. Your marketing efforts have vitals signs as well that will tell you whether you are marketing effectively.

Here are three basic measurements you should be tracking on a constant basis:

• How many calls do you get per day?
• How many of those calls do you convert to leads?
• How many of those leads do you convert to sales?

How many of these do you measure and track? If you don't know your closing rate, how can you start to improve if you don't know where you stand today?

Importance of a phone call

You can spend a lot of money getting your phone to ring. One of the biggest mistakes a small business owner can make is to underestimate the importance of a phone call.

The important question about measuring the incoming number of phone calls is not how many you should be getting.

The question you should be asking yourself is what is the trend?

Are you getting more calls than last month? Are you getting more calls than this time last year? Is your trend going up or is it coming down? Or is it a plateau? What is the relative movement of the amount of phone calls?

If you aren't tracking this number, start today. Start a phone log with names and phone numbers.

The critical information that you need from every call is:

• How did the customer hear about your business?
• What is the customer's name, home address, phone number and e-mail address?

Keep a detailed log on how customers heard about you. For instance, you should be able to determine how many visitors you get from one or more of the following marketing efforts:

• Phone calls;
• Shopfront sign;
• Yellow Pages advertisement;
• Newsletter offer;
• Newspaper advertisement;
• Radio advertisement;
• Referral;
• Direct mail;
• Website visit.

If you have set up a 24-hour information line, you can track the amount of calls you get from this line as well. A 24-hour information line is normally a recorded message line that offers free information to prospects and can take names and addresses to allow you to send them follow-up information.

You should see a dramatic increase in your call volume when you install a 24-hour information line.

But just because you're getting a lot more calls doesn't mean you're successful. You can get hundreds of calls and not have one customer make a purchase.

This would not be good, so you need to track how many of those calls actually result in a sale.

SOURCENOTE: For hundreds more practical tips and techniques to help you find new customers and increase sales on a shoestring budget, check out THE UK SMALL BUSINESS MARKETING BIBLE