Planning ahead? - Key areas you should consider for your 2017 Business Goals

The end of the year is a great time to reflect on the past twelve months and prepare for the next year. Here are six useful tips to help you plan your success for 2017.

• Review your Financial Reports

Examine and analyse your management accounts for the last 12 months.   Go through the income & expenditure and cashflow with your Accountant and compare actual versus targets. The findings will be very useful information to allow you to plan and make decisions for the coming year.  Finalise now your budgets for 2017.

• Review growth, Revenue, and Sales Targets

Take some time to reflect on the past year and ask yourself some important questions:

• Did your business grow?
• How did your revenues and profits compare with the previous year?
• Are your sales trending up or down? Identify the products and services that performed well and were profitable for your business
• Does your expenditure over the past 12 months give any cause for concern?
• Review the sales targets for 2017

In short, try to understand how your business has changed since the end of the previous year. If it's grown, congratulate your staff and do more of what you are doing!

• Set your goals for the coming year

Before you set your goals for 2017, consider if they are part of a larger objective. For example, do you want to grow your business? Growth is a long-term goal that will call for many phases and re-evaluation along the way.

So what’s the secret to success? Getting SMART is a good place to start: (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound) goals require a tangible action plan to turn what are only ideas into a new reality. When you have steps to act upon and a time frame to work with there is simply nothing you cannot achieve.

• Check in with your Customers and survey them

Getting feedback from your customers is a great way to improve your product or service. Here are some examples of questions you could ask them:

1. What could we do better or differently?
2. What are the three main things we do well?
3. Why did you decide to use our services or product in the first place?
4. Would you recommend our product or service?

• Update Technology

When you’re gearing up for growth, you need the right tools to back you up. The latest in technology and support is indispensable in making the most of your time and investments.

Take a look at your office tools, your CRM system, mobile devices, computers and printers. Making investments in equipment can help you to accomplish more and supports the efforts of your team to work more efficiently.

• Develop your 2017 Sales & marketing Strategy

Make sure you've allocated enough resources (people and money) to accomplish your company's goals for the year. The size of your marketing budget will also depend on how much you have available to invest, and how quickly you want to see results

Review and update your ideal Customer Profile, look back on the year at your customers and identify characteristics that make them profitable and enjoyable to work with.

For more information on planning your finances, contact Paul Redmond on 053 9170507 or email paul@rda.ie