Are you ready for 2025?

I love this time of year....Thanksgiving...Christmas...New Years...and business planning!  

Do you have your 2025 business plan ready?  By creating it now, you can put the finishing touches on your budget and start mentally preparing for 2025 (ready to hit-the-ground-running on January 1).  

If you're new to business planning, make sure your plan answers these questions:

1. Why are we here?

2. What do we do?

3. How do we treat each other?

4. Where are we going (the vision)?

5. How will we get there (the plan)?

6. What do we do next (the immediate action items)?

7. Who does what?

Common mistakes when planning:

1. Mistaking volume for clarity.  My first business plan was big and beautiful...66 pages long...but totally rubbish.  A great business plan can be two pages (reach out if you need help with this...you can use our "VP"...it's what we do).

2. Doing it by yourself.  I've seen too many business leaders and department heads go home and power-through their business plan...by themselves.  This is almost always a recipe for failure.  We must get "weigh-in" before "buy-in."

3. Waiting too late.  Don't wait until we're half-way through the first quarter of next year to build this plan.

4. Setting lofty goals...with no real "plan" to get there.  By the time we're creating our plan for 2025, we should have a concrete idea of "how" we'll hit our goals.  If you don't, your sales "goal" is just a sales "wish."

5. Setting vague goals.  Our goals shouldn't be "get better" or "improve sales" or "create processes."  Our goals should be specific and measurable with no ambiguity.

6. Setting too many goals.  Even larger companies should focus on no more than five big goals for a year (three is even better).

7. Failure to share the plan.  Similar to #2, we need to get buy-in from our leadership team AND buy-in from our employee-base.

8. Failure to measure progress.  Once we set the goals, how do we measure progress weekly, monthly, quarterly?  Think scorecard here.  

9. Not creating a contingency plan.  I've seen companies of all sizes create a lofty sales goal and pin all hopes of success on a new sales manager (or new marketing plan or new website design, etc...).  Because this is their only "plan," and I'm using that word loosely, they stay married to it...even when everyone can see that it's not working.  Create a backup plan.

10. Not looking at the plan.  I see companies who go through the motions of creating the plan, but rarely look at it.  You should review your plan weekly!

Need help with your plan?  That's what we do!

Ryan Giles