Here is a checklist to turbo charge your business in the New Year.
10. Evaluate your service lines. Use your QuickBooks® reports to view your revenues by item. Where are you making the most money? The least? Rank your service lines from highest to lowest revenues. Decide how you will strengthen your top revenue categories for 2009. For your lowest revenue categories, ask yourself whether they are draining your business and should be discontinued.
There are many reasons to discontinue a service line:
You are losing money on it
You hate doing it.
The liability of doing it is giving you an unreasonable amount of stress.
It is not your firms core competency.
Is there a service line you know you need to get rid of? If your clients are asking for this service and you would like to get rid of it anyway, try to find another firm that will do it in exchange for a commission. Know what your strengths and weaknesses are.
9. Start a new service line. Is there a new service that you are ready to start? Is there something your clients have been asking for that you don't do and you are tired of giving away that business?
8. Evaluate your profitability by client. Use your QuickBooks reports again to sort your revenues by client and see which client generates your highest and lowest revenues. Take a look at your top clients: do you need to take better care of anyone? Reward your top clients and weed out your bottom clients.
7. Evaluate your profitability by industry. Sort your clients by industry, and generate a report that shows your strong and weak industries. Are your clients mostly in construction? Health care? Nonprofit? Do you want to be considered an expert in a particular industry? Or do you prefer to spread your client base across multiple industries? Decide on the strategy that will work best for you in 2009.
6. Evaluate your vendors. Generate yet another report to show what vendors you've given the most business to. Do you plan to continue that business? Use your leverage to work out an arrangement with your top vendors. Can you negotiate a discount? How can you work together to get the best deal for both of you?
5. Look for and create new partnerships. Take a look at both your top clients and top vendors. Is there a possible partnership that would make sense? For example, you have a great printing company as one of your top vendors. If all of your clients began to use that printing company, could you gain a substantial discount off of printing services?
On the client side, perhaps you have a florist that your other clients and vendors could begin to use. More business to go around for all will make you look like a hero in everyone's eyes.
4. Evaluate your employees. You won't need a QuickBooks report to rank your employees. Take a hard look at who is performing well and should be rewarded and who is holding you back. Complete the tough steps that you know you need to carry out to turn the situation around.
3. Start a new initiative. Is there something you've been wanting to work into your business for a while, but haven't yet? Perhaps 2009 is the time to start your new initiative. Write some guidelines, communicate your mission, follow your gut, and get started.
2. Set your strategy. You might have an excellent idea of where you want to go with your business, but have you formalized it? All businesses need a written business plan, complete with a mission and purpose. I'm sure you've heard this one before; the question is whether you've tackled it or continue to ignore this advice. Make your mind up to spend time working on your business in 2009, not in it. Work on the big picture and stay out of the day-to-day details as much as you can.
1. Resolve to have an outstanding New Year. Set the intention to have an amazing year. Communicate your plans, goals, initiatives, and strategies to all of your stakeholders - employees, clients, vendors, partners. Let them know where you and your business are headed so that all energies are pointed in the right direction for an outstanding 2009.
Happy New Year.
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