I’ve said this many times on my radio show: If I ever choose a specific brand of religion to follow, the odds are very high that that religion will be Taoism. Why Taoism?

That’s easy. I choose Taoism because it is the closest philosophy to Mother Nature. And I personally believe that nature is perfection.

As I understand it, a Taoist believes that, and just as it is in nature, man is born, then goes through a rapid growth phase (this is when man is strongest and most energetic), begins to plateau, and then declines until death.

Upon death, the organism decays; ultimately becoming fertilizer for the next generation.

A perfect circle. No entrances, no exits. Beginning and end are indistinguishable.

Mother Nature is a perfect circle. The process I’ve just described occurs in nature every minute. Plants, insects, mammals, fish --- it matters not. All living organisms adhere to the circle of life.

Mother Nature also had the common decency to install warning systems. She put these warning systems in place so that each living organism could not only extend the particular phase of the cycle the organism was in at that time, but also so that no living organism would find itself leaving the circle prematurely.

Just the other day (maybe three weeks ago) my lower front teeth and gums began causing excruciating pain. “Damn!,” I thought to myself, “Just when I thought I was done with Dr. McKnight.” (Let me now introduce you to Dr. McKnight. Barry McKnight is the only living individual with whom I have had a longer relationship than my immediate family members. Or at least it seems that way. I swear he plants time bombs in my mouth --- designed to go off precisely six months after I pay off his last bill.)

Sorry, Barry … just having some fun.

But I knew the pattern. These teeth would keep me up all night for one, maybe two nights (I call them “McNights”). At this point, the pain always goes away, and I would enjoy somewhere between one and two weeks of relief before the BIG PAIN would arrive.

It was after this first bout of pain that almost all normal people had the problem looked at. I, being busy and living in a fantasy world where health problems magically fix themselves, never take advantage of this grace period. Instead, I lie in bed each night, wondering when the hammer will come down.

Mother Nature. She provides these amenities for you.

All of this is just a huge preamble to a point that I need to make about the very reason we write these columns … business.

My point is that we all have similar warning signs in our businesses. Here’s just one --- a rotten sales month (or two) followed by a return to normalcy.

Truth be told, it isn’t a “rotten sales month” at all but rather a warning shot over your bow. That warning shot is there to nudge you into looking at your numbers and talking to your people, pursuant to staving off the soon-to-come rotten sales quarter (or two).

I thought I’d do you the favor of providing some of the more common warning signs. These are all warning signs that I have learned --- most of them anyway --- the hard way. Hopefully, they’ll help you.

• Sign One: Phones Get Quiet – These days, we can extend this to also include “e-mail messages.” Of course, if you don’t measure inbound phone call and e-mail volumes, you have no hard baseline.

  But if you do, and if the calls and e-mails begin to tail off in volume, then you have a problem.

  My advice is to first put in place a measuring system that counts inbound phone calls from customers and prospective customers. (Any other calls are just related to operating your business and don’t really count.) Watch the volume each month. If it begins to increase or decrease, watch it even more carefully. Just this one statistic will help you better understand your business.




• Sign Two: Absenteeism and “Where’d He Go?” – Keep an eye on these two measures. If you have a good H.R. person or department, this data should find its way to you.

  Look at these data from both a departmental and overall perspective. You’ll know what to do.




• Sign Three: Product Returns/Service Complaints – Again, these must be measured. In my opinion, this data is worthy of a wall chart (I’m a huge believer in wall charts --- there should be wall charts for sales activity, customer satisfaction indexes, and of course product/service complaints and/or returns).

  If your products are coming back to you, either for repair or for a refund, you’ve got major problems. I probably don’t have to tell you this.

  You must find out, and as quickly as possible, whether this is an anomaly or the beginning of a long-term trend. Here, you can depend not only on your own internal data, but also data provided by associations and other industry groups.

  (Which gives me the opportunity to probe into the entire area of “baseline” data.) Every trade association or council worth its weight has data that they compile and publish on such things as we are discussing here. Before you cough up that 300 bucks for an annual membership, see if your association is providing such data. If not, find out why not. And if the data is lightweight, tell them that you’ll pay your dues when it’s heavyweight. This is very important.




• Sign Four: Becoming Overly Reliant on Just a Few Customers – I was in a business the other day and learned that some 70% of their revenues were coming from just one large customer. Worse, examination of this number showed that growth in this company was coming from overall growth of that one customer. In essence, a company that thought it was growing really wasn’t.

  Pie charts are beautiful things. (Again, I’m a chart junkie.) A pie chart gives you an instant overview of the relative import of any one “slice” of any pie.

  In this case, it became immediately apparent that this one customer was “it.” Should this customer go away (and God forbid if this customer has one key individual who may happen to himself have great affinity for the owner of the supplying company), the game could be over.

  I personally don’t like to see more than 10% of monthly (yes, I said monthly) revenues coming from just one customer. Or region, for that matter. Why region? You know why --- let’s say that this one particular region loses the only bridge or interstate to access it. Or, what if the region in question is hit by a major storm? A storm that might close that region for just even a week could be enough to knock a business completely out if it’s the wrong time of the year.

You probably know your own warning signs far better than anyone else. At least you should. But remember --- having those warnings is one thing. Understanding and acting on them is quite another. Don’t become one of those ostriches that, and when presented with hard facts such as, “We’ve now lost all but one customer in the state of Texas,” merely sticks his head in a hole.

Instead, accept the information and immediately go to work on: a.) interpreting that data correctly, and, b.) making the appropriate changes to accommodate that information/data.

It’s a simple thing. But it could be the difference between a thriving business and a business that once was, but is no more.