If you’ve been with SGI for some time, you’ve likely heard the phrase, “Plan or be planned for.” It’s a simple message, but the impact of those words is profound. In business and in life, you can either plan or be planned for. If you don’t make a plan of where you end up, one will be made for and you’ll wind up somewhere that you never intended. The key to achieving what you want from your business is to have a plan.
2017 is rapidly ending. 2018 is right around the corner. What’s your plan look like for the New Year? How do you plan? Where do you start? Creating a plan for your company begins with a vision. You must know where you want to end up, and then the plan is how you will get there.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What do you want for your company?
- What do you want your company to become?
- What do you want for your employees?
- What’s possible?
Your answers to these questions will help you solidify your vision for your company. And that’s step one in creating a plan: Step One is creating a vision or a desire to achieve.
What is your desire for your company? Do you want to expand to multiple locations? Do you want to build it to a point where you can exit with wealth for you and your family? Do you want to provide opportunity for your employees? Whatever your desire is, it starts in the mind. It should dominate your thinking and your actions. But keeping it in your mind won’t help you achieve it. That’s where Step Two comes in.
Step Two of creating your vision is to have a written goal. When you write something down in words, you’re solidifying it. Words convey your emotions and they bind that goal into your mind. Now it’s real, and you and your team can see it. Every time you read and reread the vision, the impression on the mind becomes deeper and deeper.
Once you’ve put your goal and plan on paper, Step Three is to achieve that vision with sheer persistence. You must be persistent to do what it takes to achieve your vision every year, month, week, day, and hour. And your vision of your company will ultimately be something that drives your team, too, but vision requires a leader. Your employees can’t create your vision. You must create it and then communicate the plan to your team in a way that they not only buy into the vision, but know that they can achieve it. A plan is a powerful tool to building a successful business.
A successful business plan should incorporate each functional area of your business and include a plan for each. That means creating a marketing plan for how you’re going to bring in the calls you need to execute your budget. It includes creating a manpower and operational plan so you’re clear on how you’re going to service the calls that come in. Plus, it includes a training plan to give your team the training that they need to excel in the coming year.
In fact, a complete business plan would include:
- Executive Summary: Sums up what your business is all about
- General Company Overview: Provides your mission statement, goals, objectives, and information about your marketplace and industry
- Products & Services: Section where you describe the service(s) you offer
- Marketing Plan
- Operational Plan: A list of your locations, licenses, personnel, and organizational chart
- Management & Organization: Section where you include bios of your key managers
- Personal & Company Financial Statements: Information a bank can analyze
- Financial Plan: How you’re going to achieve your goals
For each of these plans, your friends from SGI can help you—but each company’s plan is unique. That means your business plan must be personalized to your business, and it must be tailored around your vision and goals. The central part of your plan—and the guide to achieving your goals—is your budget.
What is a budget?
The thought of creating a budget can cause some contractors to break out into a cold sweat—but you shouldn’t worry. A budget isn’t big and scary. Quite the opposite. A budget can be a business owner’s best friend.
Simply stated, a budget is a quantified, planned course of action over a definitive timeframe. A good budget can be the difference between financial success and insolvency for your company. A good budget helps you assess whether your business will have adequate financial resources to stay the course and achieve the vision that you’ve created.
But don’t be confused. A budget is not a goal. A budget is a PROMISE! It’s a promise to yourself, your family, and your team of what you will accomplish and how you’ll get there. Without a budget, your actions may lead you to work all year and not make any money. Your actions won’t be focused on what you must do to achieve your vision. Would you work all year and not make any money? Of course not, and you shouldn’t operate a business without a budget either.
Most importantly, a budget is not a set of handcuffs. It doesn’t limit your company or box you in. It is a tool that will help you achieve exactly what you’re working toward.
Why do you need a budget?
It should be evident by now that having a budget is vital to your success, but you still might be wondering exactly what a budget can do for you. Why bother?
For starters, your budget will hold you and your team accountable to what you must do daily to achieve the results you want for your company. As you know, what gets measured gets achieved, and without accountable actions, your goals won’t be achieved.
Your budget gives your team direction. They’ll know, for example, how many calls they need to book and run each day to hit the goal. A budget creates the course that a professional team can follow to achieve success.
Your budget breaks your overall vision into manageable numbers. Those big, long-term goals that you have can be broken down into yearly goals. From there, you can break your annual goals into monthly, weekly, and daily goals by department. Once you have daily goals, managing your company becomes an exercise in making sure your team has the focus, ability, and skill to achieve your goals every day.
Simply put, your budget creates a roadmap to success. The destination at the end of the map is your goal. Your planning process begins with your vision and is refined as you create realistic goals based on your vision. With realistic goals, your budget sets the path you must take to get there. But what is realistic?
In contracting, you should be able to increase your revenue by 20 percent per year and increase your profitability to 15 percent within five years, if you aren’t already there.
Granted, not everyone will achieve these results, but they are possible with the right focused efforts, systems, and, most importantly, with the right plan.
Now it’s time to start making the winning plan for your company, but before you proceed, spend some time creating the vision for your company. Having that vision is the first step in building a successful plan for your future.