Short-Term Tactics
Short-term tactics refer to the day-to-day operations we’re all familiar with. This includes both billable work (revenue generating) and administrative work (non-revenue generating). Businesses are typically proficient at accomplishing tasks in the short-term. The key to managing short-term goals is the consistent weekly review of your operations with your personnel.
Particularly in small businesses, the owner will become caught up in the day-to-day minutia and lose sight of their long-term goals. This can also lead to the high-level, valuable staff being utilized in a less productive way. Therefore, you must take the time to evaluate whether or not your daily tactics are degrading your long-term goals. This is essential to maintaining business health.
Long-Term Strategy
CPN & Associates has years of experience working with businesses in planning their long term growth. We have found neglecting a long-term plan inhibits steady growth and encourages inefficient practices. Furthermore, working with many growing businesses has given us a wide variety of strategy solutions.
When forming your long-term plan, take into consideration your current stage of growth. Address your goals and what tactics your organization will use to grow elemental areas of your business (market penetration, brand, marketing focus, etc.).
Setting Business Revenue Goals
Defining your revenue goals can be difficult, but is essential for a well informed long-term strategy. You may want to increase your revenue or just lower your expenses. You may not be sure what your revenue goals should look like. CPN & Associates has worked with clients who are well and truly stuck in their revenue goals to find creative, effective solutions.
To help these clients, we start by analyzing current and past financial trends. We analyze these trends using various metrics that are key indicators of performance. Using these analytics, we work with the business owner to solidify their revenue goals and build out a plan for the future.
Customer Goals
All businesses need customers. Consider your current methods of acquisition and the number of customers you are serving. Make sure you know the CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) for each classification. Furthermore, understanding whether your pay structure is recurring or project based will help you plan for how many customers you would like to have. While creating customer goals, make sure to consider how this metric will affect your revenue and financial goals.
Utilizing SMART Goals
Business goals are too often stated in an open ended way. For example, “Our company would like to acquire more customers.” Of course, it's good to have a general goal to follow. However, creating SMART goals will make creating, executing, and tracking business goals much easier. You may already be familiar with SMART goals, but here are the steps to creating goals for your organization.
S - Specific
M - Measurable
A - Attainable (This is critical as many businesses aim for goals that are far beyond their current resources. Make sure you have the ability to hit these goals.)
R - Relevant
T - Time-based
CPN & Associates LLC is a Business Consulting Firm offering strategic business reviews, analytical financial reviews, operational management, and many other small business services.
