A plan without action and accountability is a waste of time
Do you have a business plan?
Business plans can be a great way for you and your team to set out your plans and targets for the business.
You focus on the purpose and visions.
Talk about ideal customers, your value proposition – what makes your business different.
Strengths and weaknesses, KPI’s…
Don’t stop there!
All this is great, but all too many businesses stop there.
The plan gets finished, gets referred to occasionally but its not used to its full potential.
For a plan to be achieved it needs clearly defined goals.
These goals need to follow the SMART acronym.
Smart Goals
SPECIFIC – ‘more customers’ is far too general. Specify the number of new customers, the average value of their sales, how many leads you need to convert to that sales target.
MEASURABLE – quantify the target xx new customers £xx,xxx of additional sales
ACHIEVABLE – is the target realistic or is it going to crash and burn
RELEVANT – having a new website might ‘look nice’ and ‘on brand’ but is it really needed for your business? Are there far more important areas that need to be focused on – new customers, new team members, team training, new equipment?
TIMEBOUND – state when the goal is going to be achieved by?
Clear actions
Once you have SMART goals its vital that you have clearly defined actions.
So, your target goal is £50,000 of additional sales in the next £12 months– great, what actions are you going to take to get that level of new sales?
These actions need to broken down into milestones for you to measure results against and keep you on track.
If the 12-month goal is £50,000 new sales – what is the 90-day goal.
And then what actions are you going to take in the next 30 days and next 90 days to make sure the 90-day milestone is reached?
Who is going to make sure you do what you say you will?
Finally, who is going to keep you on track to make sure you do what you say you will?
Who is going to keep you accountable?
You may be eager and raring to go on day 1 to ‘smash’ those targets. But what about 30 or 90 days later when your energy levels are low, you’re busy, you’re getting distracted by other issues?
Review performance
You need someone to meet with on a regular basis to review performance in the last 30-90 days.
See whether you completed those actions and hit your targets.
Did you achieve those sales?
Generate the numbers of leads you wanted?
Did your team get trained on that new software or equipment?
And to then reset the targets for the next 90 days will clear actions for you to complete.
Summary
To summarise:
A business plan is a great start, but don’t stop there.
You need clearly defined goals and actions.
You to need to measure actual performance on a regular basis.
You need someone outside of your business (not your spouse or partner!) to keep you accountable and challenge you.
You need:
- Goals
- Actions
- Accountability
Measure – Review – Reset
And go again!
Feeling less stressed
When we work closely with business owners this is what we see gets them the best results.
Being happy at work, feeling less stressed, knowing what you need to do to get the business to where you want it means you can enjoy time away from work.
If you’d like a free 30 minute meeting to discuss how we can help you run the business you want so you can have clarity and peace of mind, please get in touch.