Business Boost for Richmonte Wells clients

I don't know about you but I spend the first week back hungry. By the second week, mince pies are a distant memory and reality sets in. By week three, New Year's Resolutions start to feel like hard work.

Now is the perfect time to review business plans with a cold eye, consider where you are against target and deliberately refocus.

Here's a link to the process we use to do just that. Feel free to download it and share it with your team. As always, I'd like to know how you get on with it and how useful you find it. (We haven't uploaded the notes as we think it's pretty clear, but let us know if you'd like us to talk you through it).

Before you start though, here are two pretty obvious points:

To do a Business Plan Review you need a Business Plan

Preferably one that has numbers in it about how much money you want to make this year. Anything else is at best a vision document, at worst a work of fiction. Feel free to use words like "passion", "solution" and "client facing" but the Business Plan is a tool to help you focus on how many and how much. 

Give me a call if you need a pro forma business plan designed especially for professional service firms. The process document I'm giving you here can be used with any Business Plan (not just ours).

Doing a Business Plan Review is only the start​

Just as with any New Year’s resolution, setting goals down in writing makes success more likely (I've got proof if you need it). But more than that – it takes real commitment and determination and being clear about what you are not going to do. Give yourself a break and make sure that you have the time and resources necessary to things differently.

  "One of the most important pages in our pro forma business plan is the one that says 'What am I going to stop doing?' "

With that in mind, download the process document, have a look and get started!

The 10 key steps to successfully refocus on your business goals are:

1. Start with the end in mind - what is your strategy? Make sure you have that front of mind and stress test any objective against it.
   
2. What MUST you have done by the end of this year to achieve what you want to achieve? Be SMART but also be selective - 3 to 5 goals maximum.
   
3. Check out the gap between what you said you would do and what you have achieved so far - how big is the gap?
   
4. Are your goals still relevant and useful? If not, ditch them in favour of goals that will drive your business forward.
   
5. Be honest - what are the reasons for not achieving your goals? What can you do differently now to achieve your goals that you haven't done up to now?
6. Commit to your goals. Be clear about what will happen if you don't meet them (consequences) as well as what will happen if you do (rewards)
   
7. Break down larger goals into manageable bite-sized bits - set out positively. e.g. “action to achieve at least 1% incremental improvement in profitability every month between now and year end” 
   
8. Decide when you will review progress - weekly is probably too often, monthly not often enough. Get a colleague to review with you and act as a critical friend.
   
9. Write it down. Put it on your wall. Add reminders to your phone. Do what you need to do to get those goals in your line of sight every day so you can’t ignore them.
   
10. Celebrate success!

Whether your business plan is personal, Departmental or firmwide, this process will help you refocus on what needs to be done.​

We are offering all our clients a 2 hour Business Plan Review before the end of February. The Business Plan Review will also include a Brexit survival checklist and planning tool. If you are not yet a Richmonte Wells client but would value a Business Plan Review, give us a call on 0117 403 2424. It’ll be a sound investment of 2 hours.
If not, may I wish you every success with your New Year Resolution.