2023 is here, and it’s time to look at the 7 areas to focus on while you’re crafting your business plan.
Planning for the year is not an easy feat – I know that from experience. In order to plan effectively, you’ll need to identify what areas to focus on first – this way you’ll be more efficient in your planning.
You’ll need to do things in order to get the best results. You can try doing them out of order, but you’ll find yourself wasting more time, money and effort.
Once you have your goals set for the year, the next step is to look at your business and identify what areas need improvement, how badly they need those improvements, and how to address those areas.
Let’s begin.
Areas to Focus On #1: Your Niche
When you started your business, you identified what niche you’ll be focusing your marketing on, and while it worked out that time, you need to always be open to change. Sometimes, your niche evolves as you and your business changes and grows.
In other times, you can stick with your niche if the market is doing well. Looking at this area will have you asking questions like:
- What does my current niche look like?
- Is the market still profitable or do I need to start looking for other options?
- Other than my current niche, “who” else do I best relate to?
- Who is my “ideal client”?
Asking these questions will enable you to assess your target market and help you determine whether or not you should be expanding your niche.
Areas to Focus On #2: Your Value Proposition
When you sell your products or services to the market, you are offering to provide value to your target customers or clients.
Now the money that you will be making from those sales will be in direct proportion to the value that you’ll provide.
This is why you should be clear when it comes to your Value Proposition. By knowing exactly what your team is capable of achieving, you can confidently sell your products or services to the market at the price you want to, because you know how well it will help them.
Areas to Focus on #3: Your Marketing Plan
Once you know who your target market is and what your Value Proposition is, your next step will be to build the processes that will attract your target market to you – a.k.a. the Marketing Plan.
Because you’ve identified what types of people you’ll be marketing your products or services to, you can start building the processes from advertising to closing.
This will include:
- Lead generation
- Nurturing sequences
- Advertising materials and platforms
- Relationship and online marketing
Areas to Focus On #4: Your Organizational Structure
Once you know what your marketing processes are going to be, you’ll need to next identify the people who you think will perform best at those processes.
This is where defining your organizational structure comes in. It’s important to give the right role to the right team member. Doing this will make sure that your team member works 100% efficiently.
One of the things that can help you when focusing on this area is if you conduct year end reviews with your staff. Through these year end reviews, you can tell whether or not your team member fits the role you assigned them perfectly, or if you need to move them to another role to become more productive.
Some of the questions you can ask when defining your organizational structure are:
- Who are my team members?
- What are their current job descriptions?
- Are they performing well on their assigned roles?
- Do I need to move some of them around or are they good enough to stay where they are and improve?
Areas to Focus on #5: Your Development Plan
Once you’ve completed the marketing area of your business planning, it’s time to look at the other areas too.
This is where a Development Plan comes into play. A Development Plan will list the projects you will be working on throughout the year.
This is the place to capture all of those things you have wanted to research, create, do, perfect, delegate and implement in your business.
You may not have something for every area, but you will find that you have at least two or three areas of your business that you’ll want to improve.
Areas to look out for are:
- Marketing and Lead Generation Systems
- Sales and Servicing Systems
- Physical Equipment
- Digital Tools and Platforms
- People and Staffing
- Support Systems
- Training for Self and Staff
- Policies and Procedures
Areas to Focus on #6: Your Budget
Doing a business plan without a budget is like trying to start a fire without fuel – you’ll end up using more and you might not even get the thing burning in the first place.
It’s essential to review your expenses for the current year and include any new marketing and development changes.
You can take advantage of budgeting and accounting platforms like QuickBooks to make it easier for you to track your business expenses, thus making it easier for you to create your budget.
Areas to Focus On #7: Your Production Plan
Once you have your budget in place, you’ll know how much you can produce (if your business is in products) or how many services you can provide.
Having a production plan will help you know how well you are going to be able to meet the demand by optimizing the manufacturing process, which involves the design, production and delivery of the product or service.
A good production plan minimizes lead time, which is the amount of time that passes between the placing of an order and the completion and delivery of that order. Depending on the company and the type of production planning necessary, the definition of lead time varies slightly.
In Conclusion
Of course, there are other areas of your business that you’ll need to focus on to achieve your goals for 2023.
The areas listed above will give you a good headstart and allow you to plan in an orderly manner.
Here at HoopJumper, we’re not only interested in giving you the best platforms and technological systems to boost your marketing – we also want you to take care of the more “human” side of your business.
As such, we’ve partnered with Coach Cheri Alguire, author of the Business Planning Guides that have helped numerous real estate agents and brokers, network marketers, and small business owners in achieving their business goals by properly planning for the year ahead.
Click on this LINK to get access to Coach Cheri’s Business Planning Guides and build your 2023 business plan today.