We have all heard the legendary saying: “failing to plan is planning to fail”.
Benjamin Franklin apparently said this but more accurately it was Allen Lakein.
It is critical for any business, regardless of its size or its market, to plan what it wants to achieve in the short, medium and long-term.
More important than planning is actually writing the plans down somewhere and regularly checking how your business is comparing against those plans. Always make sure that your plans fit in with your overall business strategy.
Plan how you are going to sell more of your champion product or service.
Plan how you are going to attract more customers that want to use your services or buy your products.
Plan how to increase the gross profit that this product or service adds to your business.
Plan what your marketing efforts will consist of this year. Are you going to consolidate and only focus on those marketing channels that brought you the most leads or are you going to increase your footprint and use print, social and mainstream media in conjunction?
Plan how you want to motivate and incentivise your staff in the new year in order for them to be more productive, to bring in more customers, to treat your customers better and be more involved with the business.
The most important aspect to this is to check in regularly whether you are keeping up with these plans.
Don’t just stick to one plan or one option to grow your business. There is a reason the alphabet has 26 letters in it. Use all of them until you get to a plan that works!
And if 26 is not enough, start with double letters Aa, Bb etc. and remember that failing to plan is planning to fail.
