Top Ten 2009 New Year’s Resolutions For Small Business Owners
The New Year can be a golden opportunity for small business owners to turn their struggling or failing business around. If you spent 2008 crying over a bank account that seemed perpetually empty, rejoice! I’m going to expose a few simple changes to construct to your business that will prick your expenses and increase your sales. All while making your company more profitable than ever before.
Incorporating your Ten Resolutions into a single document is key to making this change. That document of course, is the Business Plan. You can’t keep it in your head and you certainly can’t keep it “somewhere” in your computer. Fabricate a plan and do it down on paper. A paper document can be posted above your desk and will always be visible, which will help to keep you on track. Within this understanding, we’ll write ten resolutions that will make 2009 your best year to date.
To open, you need some basics. What were your expenses last year? Win out your old receipts, cancelled checks, notes, tax returns and anything else you have that will detail where your money went in 2008. Total up your expenses. How much went to sales and marketing? How noteworthy to employees? What did you pay the power company, how much to your landlord? Atomize it all down into separate categories. Rent, utilities, taxes, accounting fees, gasoline, etc. Now you’re ready to start.
Resolution 1. Resolve upon your sales goals. How much money do you want to make? A monthly and yearly sales goal will bring focus to your company and harness wasted energy. You’ll use this energy, to focus your efforts on bringing in the dollars needed to meet your goals. So go ahead and write down your monthly sales goals. Add these twelve sales goals up, and you’ll get the yearly sales goal. Now you have specific goals to try and attain. Congratulations, your company now has a direction!
Resolution 2. This resolution will deal with your Cost of Sale. Assign simply, this means the amount of money you will exercise on labor and on your supplies and materials to complete a job. Sustain in mind that only those dollars paid to labor and supplies and materials related to completing a specific job count as Cost of Sale. Wireless phone bills for example, are not Cost of Sale items since a cell phone is used for other company business like marketing or shipping. Sixty hours of labor at Mrs. Jones’s house and 185 pieces of go are examples of Cost of Sale items.
Resolution 3. Figure out how much you’ll have to spend each month on your General and Administrative expenses. This includes insurance, gas, telephones, uniforms, advertising and anything else that is not Cost of Sale. There are fixed costs that don’t change from month to month. These are things like rent, car payments, salary payments to employees who are not paid hourly and marketing and advertising budgets.
Now look at your Cost of Sale number and your General and Administrative Expenses number. Add these two together and you have your Total Expenses. If you then subtract your Total Monthly Expense from your Monthly Sales Goal number, you can see how much profit you’re expecting to make. Eye opening can be an understatement! Perhaps for the first time ever, you can identify why you haven’t made money despite your hard work!
Resolution 4. This one is particularly important. Adjust your monthly sales goal numbers so that you come out to a profit every month. This will usually mean raising the number considerably. Your banker will be happy. You’ll be happy too. So what are you waiting for? Raise those sales goals to start keeping more of the money you make every day.
Resolution 5. Set a marketing budget. Marketing your business is a science of it’s own. How much will you spend every month to promote yourself? Some companies will spend ten percent of gross sales, some only one percent. When you decide what is most qualified to your business, write the number down and stick to it every month. You now have control of your marketing dollars.
Resolution 6. Site a half hour aside every week to track your progress. Look at the numbers on your business plan. How close to your sales goal are you for the week? How much have you spent of labor? Do you have to adjust things to maintain your company on track? You may find that sales are too low and your salespeople will have to consume more time knocking on doors and less time sitting in the office! Expenses too high so early in the week? Cut labor hours, avoid stocking up on your weekly supplies, do what you have to in order to bring those Cost of Sale numbers down!
Resolution 8. Sustain your plan visible. Design sure that your plan is printed out and posted in a visible place. If you can’t see it, you can’t manage it! Too many times a enormous idea is jotted down on a memo pad and then shoved into a desk drawer where it’s forgotten. The cold hard numbers you’ve detailed and put down on paper should be staring you in the face throughout the day.
Resolution 9. Decide what additional expenditures you need to plan for, and then fabricate allowances for them in your Busness Plan. Sustain in mind that at points throughout the year you will need to budget for additional expenses to facilitate business growth. If you want a secretary by March, you’ll need to factor that increase in labor costs. Will this new employee need a desk? A computer and a phone system? Write it down within the Business Plan you’re creating. When March comes, you will be prepared to spend the money necessary.
Resolution 10. Reach your monthly sales goals by the twenty fifth day of each month. Why would you do this? Simple really, if you meet your goal by the twenty fifth each month, by November you will have reached your Yearly Sales Goal. So in December you’ve in finish given yourself an extra month to boost sales. Attaining this goal regularly will also allow some cushion for slow periods of business throughout the year, strikes, natural disasters, etc.
The New Year can be a great year for your business. It will take consistency and dedication to sticking with the 2009 Business Plan. But if you can do it, you’ll find your bank myth swelling, your headaches vanishing and your company growing solid. Make 2009 the first of many favorable years to come.
Related Posts
Filed under Small Business Cell Phone by on Feb 24th, 2011. 