Business-Plans--6-Questions

Toward the conclusion of the calendar year, you should seriously consider investing the time to reflect upon your business. If your business is going to succeed, it will be because you and only took the necessary steps to ensure it's success. Clearly, no one cares about your business as much as you do.

In the same way that a doctor performs checkups to determine the overall health of a patient and to discover any developing problems, so you should perform checkups on your business.

Of course, this activity can be performed at any time of the year.

Do your best to answer these questions:


1. Are you following your business plan, and does the plan need revising?

Do you have a business plan? If not, that should be on your "to-do" for the next
year, somewhere near the top!


2. What part(s) of your business were effective?

You may think that I am only referring to profitability. Profit is important and
vital, however also consider your overall plans and goals. It may be the
activities producing the highest profit may also be those which require continual
intervention by you.

If part of your business plan includes constructing systems which don't require
direct involvement by you, do your best to honestly look at your situation to
determine whether your business is getting closer to that goal or not.

A vital part of this process is knowing or identifying who your best customers
are.

Are there common characteristics which are shared by others who are not yet your
clients?


3. What part(s) of your business were not effective?Conversely, did any parts of your
business fall short of your objectives? Look at clients as well as vendors.
Are you getting your money's worth for the investment?


4. Which part(s) of your business can be optimized or removed?

Be honest with yourself about those activities which are more trouble than they
contribute to your bottom line. What products or services are you providing which
may need to be discontinued?

For those activities, services or product lines which you will not discontinue,
how can you make them better? Perhaps you want to outsource certain activities.
Maybe you can make small tweaks to your advertising and see a huge increase in
sales (it happens more often than you might think).


5. Which new opportunities should you explore for your business?

New opportunities often surface due to shifts in market conditions, changes in
conditions specific to your company, or simply changes in your own perspective.


6. Are there any tax planning steps you can take right now?

Call your tax accountant and ask whether changes in the tax laws affect you, and
in the event your situation has changed dramatically from last year, your
accountant should be notified in the event your tax planning strategy should be
modified. Of course, tax planning must usually be done before the end of the year
to be effective.