Here at Funding for Good we truly believe in the power of well-timed and thoughtful business planning.
Right now, we’re planning for the year ahead. This includes scheduling events and webinars, mapping revenue streams, and building content calendars. We aim to start the new year with clarity, energy, and purpose that translates into hitting our revenue goals and creating better life-work balance.
We’ve found that the key to achieving both is smart and well-timed business planning.
All Consultants Need Annual Plans
There is no “right time” to start your business. But there are “best times” to plan for your business.
Because most consultants use the calendar year (Jan-Dec) as their fiscal year, we’ve found three key times when planning can deliver outsized outcomes:
1) Plan in the fall and line up support for the new year
Early fall is the perfect time to plan for the upcoming year and strategize for how to hit the current year’s goals (if you haven’t already). This is why our fall 1:1 Consulting Boot Camp sessions are often our most popular.
By the fall, you’ve already gathered a lot of great data and lessons learned for your business. You’re ready to plan for:
- The services you want to offer or prioritize for the coming year. You can evaluate services for the current year and assess which services delivered the most income, were the most profitable, and that you enjoyed the most.
- Realistic revenue goals for the coming year. You’ll be able to estimate your current year’s income and will likely be having renewal conversations with clients who are mapping out their goals and budgets for the coming year. This means you can set realistic revenue goals for current clients and clearly see how many new clients you’ll need to land in the coming year. Note that you’ll want to start building that client pipeline now.
- Changes to create a better life-work balance. By fall, most of us are feeling the fatigue of a busy year and ready for some time off. When that feeling is most acute is the perfect time to assess whether your life and work balance are where you want them to be. For example, you might decide to try a four-day workweek (as I’m planning) or plan to take off two months next year instead of one (as one of our team members is planning).
While fall planning is essential, it’s important to not stop there! January is your next key planning moment where you’ll set the tone for the rest of the year.
2) Devote January to business goals and growth
Planning is nothing without execution!
I often see consultants set ambitious goals, but struggle to achieve them once the new year starts. One big reason: those goals aren’t backed with viable strategies, action plans, and accountability.
Here at Funding for Good, we like to hit the ground running in the new year (after a nice, long break). We’ve also noticed that our January Consulting Boot Camp sessions tend to book up fast.
Business planning in January is all about setting and delivering on your intentions:
- Executing on client pipeline-building. By January, ideally, you will have renewed contracts with many of your current clients and have a clear view of how many new clients you need to hit your revenue goals. Now you’ll need to start executing on your plans to secure those clients, including intake meetings, follow-up, and other tactics specific to your type of work.
- Marketing your priority services. One of the top mistakes we see consultants make is assuming that clients will simply come to them. Yes, referrals can be a very rich source of new clients, but they can just as easily dry up. That’s why we recommend every consultant start marketing your priority services. In a future article, we’ll delve into some of the different ways consultants can do this!
- Establishing accountability. When it comes to achieving your business goals, research shows that accountability is one of the most powerful tools you can use. Specifically, sharing your goals with another person increases your chance of achieving them to 65%. By adding accountability check-ins, you increase that likelihood to 95%! There are multiple ways to create this sort of accountability bonus: team up with another consultant to keep each other accountable, join a consulting community, or invest in a mentorship or coaching program, like our 1:1 Consulting Boot Camp.
3) Schedule a mid-year boost or reset
By spring and summer, you’ll have a solid sense of how the year is going for your business. Are you hitting client or revenue goals, or is something just not working?
The good news is that, in the first half of the year, you still have time to turn things around—or take them to the next level!
That’s why we always take a step back in the spring to assess what’s working and what isn’t.
We recommend looking at the following three areas:
- Assess your services. Look at each of your services and ask: Which is most popular? Which is delivering the best value for you and your clients? Which are you enjoying most vs finding a drag? Do you need new tools or templates to increase your efficiency? Once you know the answer, you can adjust your service offerings and marketing accordingly.
- Assess your marketing and client pipeline. Are you having enough client intake calls to hit your goals? Are your marketing channels working? If you don’t have marketing channels yet or you are struggling to make them pay off, it may be time for peer or expert support!
- Assess your wellness. Wellness is one of the last things many of us think about—but it’s what enables us to not only grow our businesses but enjoy the fruits of that work. If it’s spring and you’re already feeling burned out, it might be time to take a step back, reassess, and make some changes.
If you’re interested in getting more support as you launch, grow, or streamline your business, check out our consulting Boot Camp. We offer open houses and discovery calls to help you decide if our program is right for you.
