First, let me say congratulations on your business’ success. Many businesses don’t make it past their first year and you have found yourself enjoying success.
Let me share something with you from my own business success. Several years ago I started a business. Of course I made a business plan. I planned for realistic, moderate growth, giving the circumstances of the industry and the economy. And I opened for business. As you might expect, the first few months were quiet months where expenses definitely exceeded income.
But then two factors made for an unexpected increase in business: First, a localized boom in the marketplace occurred. (I didn’t anticipate it because it was quite separate from my industry, but it swelled the city with money- and spenders). Also, my marketing efforts proved to be very successful – more than I imagined they’d be.
The result? Income poured in and my year’s business goals were achieved in about 8 months. I was surprised. I was scrambling to meet my customer’s requests so it took me just over a month before I could sit down and put together an emergency plan, one that included hiring some help.
Here’s what I did and it’s what I recommend you do annually if you’ve found that you have exceeded your business goals.
- Identify the cause of your success. The reality is that your goals may have been far too low to begin with; perhaps you were simply too modest in your assumptions. Or maybe, like in my case, there were outside factors that played a part. Keep working at identifying the cause of your success until you figure it out. You need to know it for the next step.
- Goal setting for the future. Of course you want to do this anyway, but if you’ve exceeded your goals, you need to factor in why. If you set your goals too low the previous year, set them higher this year. If you met your goals because of an economic boom, you’ll have to decide if it will last the following year. If so, work those into your goals. If not, dial back on your goals. If you exceeded your goals because of marketing, you will probably want to increase your goals for the following year and boost your marketing efforts, too!
- What’s next for your business? If you’ve exceeded your goals, you’ll want to build into your business some new strategies for dealing with the increased growth. In my case it was hiring additional staff. It might be outsourcing work or increasing your working hours.
- Will you take the business in a new direction? Perhaps this first year is just part of a long term plan; for example, turning your locksmith business into a full service home renovation company by adding new services every year. Is it time to add a new service, perhaps slightly earlier than you first thought?
- Are you going to maintain a “more of the same” approach? Perhaps you want to coast for a while. While I wouldn’t suggest this approach if your business is underperforming, an over-performing business might want to coast for a while in order to let the demand level off and allow you to work out your processes and systems over time. If you do this, be sure to keep your finger on the pulse of your business in order to make sure you don’t let it coast downhill!
Business planning will help you succeed. But if your success moves beyond your business plan, get it out and look at what you can do for the following year.
