A Business Attribution Study is like creating a family tree for your clients or customers, showing where they originated from and how they became associated with your organization. Hint: When you develop a Marketing Action Plan (MAP) for your organization, you aim to identify all the target audiences crucial for your success, which typically includes those identified through the Business Attribution Study. 

Steps to building a Business Attribution Study for your organization:  

Step 1: Gather the total annual sales data for the past ten years, broken down by year and client. It's best to include the gross profit (or income) generated by each client during this period.

Step 2: Engage a small management team familiar with your client base to discuss and document how each client was acquired over the past decade. This involves identifying specific sources or channels through which clients were acquired, such as referrals from existing clients, vendors, or suppliers. For example, if a client was referred by a vendor, note down the name of the vendor representative who made the referral. Additionally, trace back the lineage of client referrals, attributing them to their original sources.

Bonus step: In addition to tracking client acquisition sources, you can also quantify the distribution of your annual sales by different categories of services provided. This entails analyzing the percentage of sales contributed by various service categories, such as new builds, renovations, exterior projects, interior projects, etc. Furthermore, if your organization operates in sectors like commercial construction, you can differentiate between projects where you acted as the General Contractor versus a Subcontractor. This analysis can provide insights into the profitability of different service categories and help inform future business planning efforts.