3 Numbers You Must Check Every Monday
Many business heads log into their bank account in the morning and if they see a plus, they assume everything is fine. Since September 2016, when we founded Strategies and Visions PL in Warsaw, we have analyzed 134 companies and we know one thing: turnover is vanity, profit is reality. If you don't know your key numbers, you're running your business with a blindfold on.
Customer acquisition cost, or how much you pay for your earnings
The first number you must know by heart is CAC. It's the cost you incur so that one new customer makes a purchase. Let's take the example of Mr. Dariusz from Grójec, who runs a farm machinery parts store. In March 2024, he spent exactly 4,350 PLN on Google ads. From these ads, 18 customers came. Quick math shows each of them cost him 241 PLN and 66 cents. Mr. Dariusz thought he was earning until we checked his margin on the most popular filters, which averaged 115 PLN. He was paying over 120 PLN out of his own pocket for every customer.
We count every zloty from marketing because without it, you're burning money in a furnace. At Strategies and Visions PL, we check these data every week, not once a year when filing taxes. In the case of the company from Grójec, changing the strategy to promote more expensive repair kits reduced CAC to 84 PLN in just 19 working days. The plan on paper turned into real profit in the bank because we started controlling who we showed the offer to. You don't need a million website visits; you need those who will buy and leave more with you than you spent to bring them in.
To calculate your CAC, sum up advertising expenses, the salary of the employee handling marketing, and invoices for agencies from the last month. Divide this sum by the number of new, paid orders. If this number is higher than 30% of your average margin, your business model needs immediate repair. Concrete tasks, not empty promises – start by cutting ads that generate only clicks, not sales. In 2023, we helped 42 clients escape the 'empty clicks' trap, which on average increased their profitability by 14.8% in one quarter.
Turnover is vanity, profit is reality. If you're paying more for a customer than you earn from them, it's not a business, it's a hobby.
Customer lifetime value – why one purchase is not enough
The second key metric is LTV, which is how much money a customer will leave with you throughout the entire period of cooperation. Most companies in Poland focus only on the first sale. This is a mistake that costs thousands of zlotys. Analyzing data from a construction wholesaler near Pruszków in July 2024, we noticed that an average customer returns to them 4 times a year and leaves a total of 12,450 PLN net. With this knowledge, the owner stopped fearing spending 500 PLN to acquire a new contractor. He knew this investment would return with interest as early as the second order.
We check the numbers before we propose anything, which is why LTV analysis is fundamental for us. If you know your customer buys from you regularly for 22 months, you can plan investments in equipment or new people. Without this number, you're acting in the dark. At Strategies and Visions PL, we teach how to build loyalty that translates into numbers in Excel. In the same wholesaler in Pruszków, after introducing a simple system of reminders about running out of materials, the average time between purchases shortened from 94 to 67 days. This actually increased cash in hand by 21% on an annual scale.
Think about what you're doing to make the customer return to you. Do you have a list of people who haven't bought anything in 3 months? Sending them a specific offer, rather than a general newsletter, is the task for next Monday. In one of our projects for a service company in Warsaw, refreshing a database of 312 'dormant' customers generated 47 new orders in just 12 days. That is exactly the power of working on numbers, not on hunches. A plan on paper must include repeatability because that's what builds your company's stability.
Conversion, or the sieve your money leaks through
The third number is the conversion rate. It's the percentage of people who, after entering your site or office, actually bought something. Imagine you run a furniture showroom where 100 people enter daily, but only 2 leave with a receipt. Your conversion is 2%. If you manage to raise it to 4%, you double your profit without spending a single extra zloty on advertising. In Q2 2024, we worked with a transport company that had 4,800 monthly site visits but only 12 quote inquiries. The conversion was a tragic 0.25%.
Instead of buying more ads, we rebuilt the contact form. We shortened it from 11 fields to the 4 most essential and added a phone number visible immediately at the top of the page. The effect? In the next month, with the same number of visits, the company received 56 inquiries. Conversion jumped to 1.16%. These are concrete tasks, not empty promises. At Strategies and Visions PL, we don't believe in 'pretty sites', we believe in sites that sell. We count every zloty and every user movement to know where you're losing potential customers.
This Monday, check in Google Analytics how many people abandon your cart or contact page. If the bounce rate exceeds 70%, it means your offer is unclear or the page works too slowly. The average page load time for our clients after optimization is 1.4 seconds. Every second of delay is a sales drop of about 7%. In the business world, time is literally money, and numbers don't lie. Fixing one small element in the customer journey often gives a better result than an expensive campaign on TV or radio.
Doubling conversion gives the same effect as doubling the advertising budget, but costs much less.
Net margin – what actually stays in your pocket
The last thing you must remember is the net margin after all costs. We often meet owners who boast of million-dollar turnovers while living in an office at Zlota 44, but at the end of the month, they have trouble paying their 14 employees. In October 2023, we did an audit for an IT service company. Revenues were 340,000 PLN per month, but after paying for licenses, the office, taxes, and salaries, the owner was left with 4,200 PLN. He worked 70 hours a week for a lower rate than his junior developer.
We check the numbers before we propose anything, and in this case, we proposed a drastic cut in fixed costs and resigning from 3 unprofitable projects that ate the most time. After three months, turnover fell to 280,000 PLN, but net profit grew to 32,000 PLN per month. Sometimes less is more. A plan on paper must include your remuneration and company profit, not just 'business activity'. At Strategies and Visions PL, we make sure you're not a slave to your own marketing.
Do a simple test: from today's revenue, subtract all variable costs, then fixed costs. Divide what's left by the number of hours you dedicated to the company this month. If your hourly rate is lower than 150 PLN, you urgently need to change your price list or work model. Since 2016, we've helped 89 companies in Poland correct their profitability, which allowed them real investments in development, rather than just surviving from the first to the first. We count every zloty because we know in business, the one with more cash at the end of the day wins.
