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It’s not too late to develop your business plan for rest of year

What do you want to achieve this year? How much money do you want to make? It’s wise to develop an annual plan each year, and, fortunately, it’s still early enough in 2004 for you to sit down and create one for this year.

Most of us don’t like planning. We enjoy dreaming, thinking up great schemes and imagining great success. But planning makes us a lot more uncomfortable. After all, planning requires decision-making.

Rhonda Abrams

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/0126abrams26.html

A good planning process involves taking a look at a range of options, asking some tough questions and then making choices about how we want to proceed. Most of us fear that when we choose one course of action, we eliminate all future opportunities.

Of course that’s not true. Developing a plan doesn’t mean we can’t make changes. But it gives us a framework for making big decisions and guiding day-to-day operations.

Even if we value the concept of planning, it’s hard to find the time to actually do it. We’re so busy handling all the day-to-day details of our businesses, we don’t have the opportunity to sit down and think about the big picture.

But remember one of Rhonda’s Rules: "You can’t reach a goal you haven’t set." The process of planning gives you the chance to set realistic goals and outline a strategy for achieving those goals.

Annual planning doesn’t have to involve a long drawn-out process. Even sitting down for a few hours or a half-day, ideally with key employees if you have them, can help you be more successful in the coming year.

Here are a few questions for you to look at in your annual planning process:

• What is your financial goal for this year? Put down a specific dollar figure of the amount of gross revenue you’d like to achieve. Be realistic. Don’t be overly aggressive. If you are, you and your employees will inevitably be frustrated when you can’t reach your target. But don’t be too conservative, either. Stretch yourself a bit.

• If you have different product or service lines, different locations, or different distribution channels, what are your financial goals for each of these? Put a specific dollar amount to each income-producing aspect of your business.

• What do you see as the biggest challenge in reaching the financial targets you’ve just set? Acquiring new customers? Increasing revenue from the customers you already have? Adding staff? Adding products or services? List the issues you’ll have to address if you want to be able to achieve your financial success.

• What are the steps you and your staff need to take to deal with those challenges? If you need to acquire new customers, does that mean you have to increase your advertising, exhibit at trade shows, increase referrals? Think through some of the major activities you’re going to have to expand, add, or contract to enable you to achieve your financial goals.

• With each of the actions you’ve outlined so far, put a dollar figure of estimated costs and an estimate of other resources each will take: staff time, your time, equipment, and so on.

• How are you and your staff spending your time? Are you using your time in ways that make it possible to achieve your 2004 goals? How can you restructure your time to enable you to take steps you’ve outlined?

• How are you spending your money? Are there ways you can reduce current expenditures to free resources for new activities?

Now, look at the total picture.

You have a list of the activities you’d like to add and the activities you’re involved in. You’ve indicated the costs in terms of time and resources for each. Go through the list and give each activity a priority. Then ruthlessly eliminate low-priority, overly costly or unrealistic items.

Finally, turn these priorities into a plan of action.

Put target dates and staff assignments with each. Write your financial needs and targets in your accounting software program, on paper, or use the electronic financial templates available on my Web site (http://www.planningshop.com) to create an annual budget. There, you have your 2004 annual plan.

Rhonda Abrams is the author of The Successful Business Plan: Secrets & Strategies. To get free business tips, register at http://www.RhondaOnline.com , or write to her at 555 Bryant St., No. 180, Palo Alto, CA 94301.

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