How To Accelerate Company Growth This Year - Get Started With Our New Year's Checklist
How To Accelerate Company Growth This Year - Get Started With Our New Year's Checklist
How To Accelerate Company Growth This Year - Get Started With Our New Year's Checklist By Leili Mckinley
As we head into a new year, the growth of our businesses will be the focus of strategy and planning sessions for at least the first quarter. Some of you early birds will have already begun this process in December, but for others the planning starts this month.
In my experience, strategic growth springs from the deliberate interplay of 3 business segments: the ability to increase income, the management of operational efficiencies, and great leadership to drive both the aforementioned.
Increasing income is more than just looking to broaden your current market. Other factors such as making each sale more profitable, cultivating more profitable vendor partnerships, as well as targeting unusual market opportunities (blue ocean strategies) are key components of planning for more profits.
Of course if you pour more water (income) into a bucket (your company) that already has a hole in the bottom, it is never going to fill (full of more profits). You need to look for the holes in your operation that are draining your profits. Cut inefficiencies and waste. Two areas to examine right away are how well you are using your existing financial and human resources. Watching how the money flows through your company will give you great insight so you can stop wasting it. Use those weekly financial meetings and reports to dig through your companies financial well being and make your money work for you! That is working smarter, not harder. Of course if your employees are not performing to the best of their abilities, they are wasting company profits too. So make sure you have those performance reviews ready and you know how you are going to motivate them this year through training and incentives to help them achieve their goals.
Finally, without great leadership, your company growth will not happen. Inspiring others to carry out your company vision takes skill and planning. Knowing how, when and what you are going to communicate to your employees is critical to gaining consensus, and thus company wide alignment. The alignment of ALL efforts makes the difference between a good year and a great year. One person pushing a boulder up hill cannot compete with the team effort of twenty.
Solid strategy comes from making a sound assessment of your current business practices. With that in mind let us review a new years checklist.
New Years Check List
Grow Income
**By Individual Sale. Are you making the most profit you can with each sale?
**New Internal Markets. Have you explored the entire potential of your current market?
**New External Markets. How many can you list?
**Alliances. How can you make profitable vendor or customer alliances this year?
Cut Waste
**Budgets. Are you using them?! effectively???
**Assets. Have you reviewed your current and long term assets for potential reassignment? Are there ways you could get your money to work for you?
**Cash Flow Management. Growth takes money. Do your financial projections reveal weak spots? Do not let yourself get caught in a cash crunch. Last minute loans can be expensive.
**Employees. Do your employees have clear goals and have you empowered them to achieve them?
**Operational Waste. How will you seek out and mitigate wasteful activities, systems, and behaviors?
Leadership
**Review mission and vision company statements. Do they state your vision clearly?
**Company wide training. What subjects and what kinds of training will you offer this year?
**Company events. How are you going to connect to your employees, customers and vendors this year as a leader?
These are the general areas you want to examine now. Remember, every business has its blind spot, so try to be as objective as possible. You do not have to get lost in the details but at least try to flesh out a strategy and simple plan for growth. It is the first step to working smarter, not harder.
Remember, you have unlimited growth potential. Have a successful 2008!
Leili McKinley is Managing Partner of Soaring Phoenix LLC, a small business consulting firm, specializing in growth strategies for small businesses. "If you have reached a plateau, we can help you grow". More information can be found at http://www.soaring-phoenix.com
