I just found a really cool site. Disclaimer right up front: the following is information based on sole proprietors, not corporations and your data may vary greatly - but check it out:

There is a site where you can select your industry - plug in your annual gross sales and it will provide a P&L (profit and loss statement) with percentages for each line item based on national averages in your industry.

So say you are a small company just starting out - or THINKING about starting out and you want to benchmark your performance, or expected performance against those actually in the biz.

Oh - think about your first business plan and you had to plug in numbers and you were pulling them out of the air or some other unlikely location...this site can provide generic numbers that may add value to your calculations.

It's at least something to compare yourself to - or maybe it's just good for a laugh, but I thought it was pretty cool.

The site is called BizStats

Not interested in benchmarking your business against national stats for sole proprietors? Not a prob, this site also has stats on a variety of topics:

Size of U.S. Markets by Industry Total Number of U.S. Businesses
Largest Employers by Industry Summary of US Employment 1990-2000
Average Sales per Store Location Rules of Thumb for valuing selected Businesses
Safest & Riskiest Small Businesses Number of Businesses by Revenue Size
Number of Corporations by Industry

Just to name a few.

I love numbers, don't you?

Deborah Chaddock Brown
Professional Writer, Numbers Geek
AllWrite Ink