We have officially made it past the half way point of 2022. Hasn’t the first half of the year flown by? Everyone will have a different feeling about how their year has gone so far, but whatever your experience has been, now is a great time to plan for the final half of 2022.
Maybe you have smashed the first half of the year and want to maintain and/or exceed upon what you have already accomplished. If that is you, well done!
Or, maybe you are feeling a little discouraged as you did not make the forward progression that you expected and worked so hard for. Do not be discouraged. 2022 has been tough, but all is not lost! There is still time to claw it back and exceed even your own expectations. It is important that you are intentional about success. If you want to achieve business growth in 2022, it starts with CLARITY! Here are a few steps you can take in the next few weeks, to increase your chance of ending the year successfully and achieving business growth.
Revisit your vision
To reach your destination, you must first know where you are going. The most important part of planning for the final 6 months is being clear on what success looks like. If business growth is the goal, what does that look like?
Spend some time this week reflecting on the vision you have for your business and for your life. It may have been quite a few months since you stopped and reflected on exactly where it is you are trying to get to. Ensure that you have razor sharp clarity on the purpose and mission of your business and how they feed into what you are trying to achieve overall.
Allow yourself be excited by your vision and what you are seeking to achieve with your business. If it doesn’t move you, then it is not audacious enough. You should be inspired by your vision. Having this clarity will give you a sense of purpose and help you maintain motivation. It will also help you better determine the opportunities you should be seeking versus those you should say no to. When we have no clarity, we can waste time on activities which do not serve us or move us forward. Knowing our intended direction of travel, will help us to be more discerning with what we commit our time to. If it isn’t related to business growth, should you be doing it?
Ask yourself these questions:
- Where do I see the business in 5 years?
- What does my daily life look like in 5 years?
- What size of team to I want?
- What type of work will we be doing?
- Who will we be working for?
- What do we aim to achieve?
If you have a team, ensure that you involve them in the process. Get them to contribute and see how they will be involved in this future you are creating.
You may be thinking how 5 years in the future applies to the next 6 months. If you get clarity on the long term goals, it will help motivate you to setting yourself on that trajectory now.
Review your performance
Because we often do not see immediate major growth in our businesses, we do not recognise how far we have come and count ourselves out. We can sometimes see failure, where there has actually been success. Incremental progress is still progress, but we often miss it, because we are not properly or accurately tracking. Because we don’t stop and understand the actual performance of our business, it is difficult to get a true sense of how we have performed and whether we have achieved business growth.
Spend some time deep diving into all areas of performance in your business. Evaluate all of the performance areas that will have an impact on your business growth: Finances, sales, client satisfaction, operations etc. You may be surprised by the results.
Maybe you didn’t hit your sales goals but you were able to reduce costs. Maybe you didn’t hit all of your key performance indicators, but in other areas you exceeded the metric set. It is also important to be honest with yourself.
Ask yourself:
- Did we implement everything that we set out to implement at the start of the year?
- Are we being consistent?
- Are we regularly tracking and reviewing performance and making adjustments?
- Which areas pose the greatest challenges and how will we overcome them?
Set your sales targets
This is a MUST! Get clear on exactly how much sales you want to achieve for each service or product, for each month of the remainder of the year. This will help you to understand and plan for the required resources, time output and cost of delivery.
It is important to be proactive with sales and identifying the number of sales required will inform the amount of marketing and sales activity required to hit your sales targets, which will help you achieve business growth. It will provide focus and if properly tracked, will enable you to make adjustments if you see you are moving too far away from the target.
Ask yourself:
- Which of our services/products are the most profitable?
- Which ones are the least profitable?
- Are we accounting for any seasonal trends which may impact sales?
Update your marketing and sales strategies and tactics
If you want to achieve business growth by the end of the year (or next year), it is essential that you have clear strategies to enable you to achieve it. The strategies that you defined at the start of the year may no longer be relevant. Now is a great time to update your strategies, assuming that you have them.
Build upon the areas that have proven successful. Where specific strategies have not been successful, seek to understand why and maybe change approach. You should then identify the key tactics which you feel will work going forwards. Ensure that you are clear on the goals that the strategies are seeking to accomplish and the ways in which you will measure success to achieve business growth.
Ask yourself:
- Do we have enough up to date insights on our target clients/customers?
- Do we know EXACTLY who our target clients/customers are?
Update your action plan
Create a list of all of the specific actions which need to be accomplished and by when. Create start dates and end dates and assign the tasks to the person, or people responsible for carrying them out. Try to overestimate, rather than underestimate the time it will take to complete the tasks. This will help ensure you are not putting too much pressure on yourself or team members. Make sure that you schedule in weekly, monthly and quarterly reviews to determine if actions are being completed in the specified time.
Ask yourself:
- What are the key priorities that will help move the business forward?
- How will you prioritise operational and strategic tasks into the weeks, months and quarters?
Identify partnerships &/or support
You can’t do it all alone and actually you shouldn’t have to. Identify individuals and/or organisations that can support you in achieving your goals. Maybe you need to partner with another small business to help expand your reach. Maybe you need to get a mentor or a coach to provide guidance or to hold you accountable. Maybe you need to expand your team to increase capacity. Whatever your requirement, be clear on what/who you need and make a plan for getting them on board.
Ask yourself:
- What areas do we struggle with internally that are preventing us achieving our goals?
- What could we outsource to help speed up or improve what we are doing?
- What partnerships could help us add value to our existing client/customer base or could help us attract a totally new audience?
If you want to achieve business growth and success in the next 6 months, then get intentional.
If you need additional support to help you get clarity on your vision, achieve business growth and success, apply to work with She’s the Boss. View our brochure for more details Read the Brochure