Pick a Number

As 2014 comes to an end, have you taken a few minutes to look over your sales and profit numbers for the year?  How did they turn out?  Better than last year?  Were your numbers as good as you had planned when 2014 started?  Wait… you didn’t have a plan for 2014?  Did you have a goal… a number you wanted to reach?  You say you just tried to do things better as the year went along?  How did that work out for you?

Okay, I’m sorry, but I’m trying to lay a little guilt trip on you with these questions.  I know that a large majority of business owners who read this post did not have a plan or even a goal for their business sales and profit levels in 2014.  Or any prior year that they were in business.  Were you one of them?

Every piece of business success literature I’ve read emphasizes the importance of having a goal and a plan to reach it.  And several studies and surveys over the years have confirmed that a higher level of success comes to those companies who have a plan.  So I conclude that if you have no goal or plan, you either a) don’t care if you succeed in business, b) feel that your success is more a matter of luck than design, c) fail to prioritize planning enough to make a small amount of time for it, or d) don’t know how.

If reasons a) or b) apply to you, it may take more discussion than I can allot in this post to help you see the importance of planning.  But with reasons c) and d), maybe the following four step approach will help you both to know how to get started and to realize that your plan for 2015 doesn’t have to take up a lot of time or be as hard as it is sometimes portrayed.

1. Examine your financial results for 2014 as your starting point.  What sales level did you achieve?  How much money did you pay yourself this year?  What was your bottom line net income number?
2. What goal would you like to set for 2015?  How much sales can you reasonably achieve next year?  How much money would you like to pay yourself during the year?
3. What will it take to achieve the goals you’ve now set?  What will you do differently to hit your higher sales numbers?  What needs to change in regard to your expenses that will help you achieve your profit and take-home-pay goals?  Remember to consider that you also may need to account for debt payments.  How much do you plan to reduce your liabilities in 2015?
4. Write it down!  Your goal and plan are much more helpful to you if you put them in writing and put them in a place where you will see them and refer to them often.  Keep it simple by putting it on one sheet of paper to start with.

If an annual plan is not something you are in the habit of doing, start with these four simple steps this year.  You’ll find that it will help you think just a little differently about your business, and thinking differently leads to performing differently during the year.  Planning is not just a game of picking a number year after year.  Although most of us want growth in our businesses, the growth must come because of planned actions we will take that give us the best chance of achieving that growth.

If planning still seems too foreign or confusing to you, reach out for help.  There are many coaches and consultants who would be happy to help you sort it out and put your business on a firmer path toward success.