Exceed Goals With a Fluid Business Plan
It’s a new year! If you have a business and your business plan is older than a year, not clearly defined, or even non-existent, it’s time to update your business plan. One important aspect of a good business plan is the way in which the plan sets up ANNUAL goal setting.
- Why is it important to update and refresh your plan every year?
- How will it help your bottom line?
- How do you refine your plan to meet specific goals each year?
In the mail and business center industry, as in most industries, a well laid out, detailed, annually renewed business plan will help you and your staff focus on shared goals. Historically, businesses with well crafted, easy to follow, refreshed business plans do better year over year than those that do not regularly update goals within their plans. They also tend to reach their goals faster.
Plans and goals are not the same.
Think of the plan as the race, and the goal as the finish line. You may still eventually reach the finish line without a goal, but wouldn’t you like to get there faster?
What should a good plan include:
- It should be written from the audience’s perspective. Who will read your plan? A banker? Staff? Your manager? The more details you include, the easier it will be for someone else to understand it, follow it, and meet or exceed your goals.
- Specific goals will be laid out in detail within the plan-
For example: “I want to increase copy sales by 200% next year”, is a goal, not a plan.
A goal with a plan:” We are going to lease a new high-speed copier in January and focus on increasing profits on copier transactions by building our scanning and archiving business 200% by Dec 31st. Our goal is to increase overall scanning sales 100% by April 1, and 200% by Dec 31- an additional 400.00/ month by April 1, and an additional 800.00/ month by Dec 31. The current copier lease is 285.00/month. The new lease will be 325.00/month for a difference of 40.00/ month. Meeting these goals should help the store reach its vision of increased copy machine margins.
Staff responsibilities should be clearly laid out within the plan-
Carla will put together a marketing flier and coupon in January for mailbox holders and walk-in customers. George will visit and market to 10 local schools in February, He will visit 40 targeted local businesses in March and April, and 10 nursing homes in May. Sally will attend at least 2 networking meetings per month, and follow up on all leads within 2 days of the meetings. Carla will also design and oversee the sending of one targeted EDDM mailing focusing on Scanning to archive each quarter.
Give staff a reward or incentive for meeting goals.
Find out what they want. % of increased sales? Pizza party? Whatever it is, give them the opportunity to help decide what the prize will be.
WHY you need a refreshed plan every year.
- Goals are not static. Once you reach one, there should be another bigger one waiting to take its place.
- If you did not reach a goal one year, it is helpful to look back and discuss what you could do better next year to make that goal a reality.
Staff members often have great ideas. An annual planning meeting is a great place to explore those ideas. Plans are only as good as their execution. If your staff is involved from the beginning stages in updating your plan, and given clearly defined goals, they are more likely to stay actively engaged throughout the process. They are also more likely to be able to critique the performance at the end of the year and make useful and executable suggestions.
What do you do if you meet your goals? Move the goal post!
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Did You Know?
The PC Synergy website has many short training videos that will guide you to reports that will help you set specific goals
Time Activity Report is a historical report in PostalMate® that will help you with scheduling staff during busy times
http://bit.ly/TimeActReport
Sales and Marketing Tool- is another PostalMate® tool that will help you set goals in specific departments.
http://bit.ly/SalesMktgTool
0Use these reports for creating staff contests and marketing analysis.