How strategic business owners use summer to create their most profitable Q4 yet

Want to know how strategic business owners use summer to create their most profitable Q4 yet? For many businesses, Q4 (October to December) is the busiest, and financially the most important, quarter of the year. But a successful Q4 starts way before the 1st of October. In fact it happens months before then. Keep on reading to find out how strategic business owners use summer to create their most profitable Q4 yet.

 

 

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HOW STRATEGIC BUSINESS OWNERS USE SUMMER TO CREATE THEIR MOST PROFITABLE Q4 YET

 

They review their year-to-date 

In order to prepare for your most profitable quarter, you have to have a good understanding of what has already happened to date. That’s why strategic business owners will review their year-to-date. This will ensure that rather than making assumptions, they’ve got an accurate understanding of what has been happening in their business this year. They’ll look at their performance against any goals they currently have, as well as reviewing key metrics or KPIs.

 

They remind themselves of what happened in the last Q4

 

In addition to reviewing their year-to-date, strategic business owners will also remind themselves of what happened in the last Q4. Looking back to the last Q4 not only means they’ll have a good understanding of how ths business performed in relation to key financial metrics, such as revenue, profit, marketing spend etc, but they’ll also be able to think about the reality of what happened to the business during that quarter. For example, they might think about whether there was anything that stopped the quarter from being even more profitable such as not having enough people working, the business owner not having enough time for income-generating activities, advertising spend being higher than other times of the year etc.

 

They get clear on how to maximise profit

 

Maximising profit in a business can happen in a number of ways, but some key areas strategic business owners look at are.

 

Pricing 

To increase profitability you want to be increasing your price and decreasing your costs, and so checking your prices is a key activity to do Q4 starts. The aim is to ensure that everything is priced as high as possible, without tipping ove the point where increased prices is going to negatively impact demand.

 

Capacity 

For service-based businesses capacity can be a major issue and mean you aren’t able to maximise potential revenue. If you are working in your business by yourself this can mean looking at ways to maximise the time you are able to commit to service delivery. If you have a team it can look like increasing the number of people in your team, or the number of hours people work to increase capacity.

 

Marketing Spend 

 

In an effort to maximise profitability you want to ensure that your marketing spend is optimised to generate the best return-on-investment. Too little marketing spend can result in a decrease in sales and therefore revenue. Too much marketing spend can result in you generating more demand than you can fulfil and so is wasted. The aim is to find the balance where you are generating the maximum number of sales based on the capacity of your business and also doing it in the most cost-efficient way.

 

Offer Suite 

 

Across your offer suite the reality is the profitability of each offer could vary drastically. Understanding the profitability of each offer can mean you are able to identify what should be the key offers sales are focused on during the quarter.

 

DON’T LEAVE YOUR SUCCESS IN Q4 TO CHANCE. GET A PLAN IN PLACE. Whilst I’m known as the Annual Planning Queen, I help business owners with annual, 6-month and quarterly plans. So if you’d like support to plan for Q4 for maximum success don’t do it alone. Work with me. DM me on LinkedIn or  Instagram saying QUARTER.

 

 

They prepare for a busy marketing period.

 

Whether the business is going to have a launch moment or have an ongoing marketing campaign in Q4, the focus in summer is preparing the business for that key marketing period. This preparation can vary from business to business, but some very common activities include.

 

Audience building

It’s not uncommon before a key sales period, when selling is the main focus, to have a period of audience building before. This is especially true if you are planning on doing a concentrated period of sales-focused marketing (such as an online launch). This audience building phase could be intentionally growing your email list or social media following.

 

Create your marketing plan

Given how important marketing campaigns are in Q4 it is no unusual for businesses to get period and create the marketing plan in advance. Having a clear understanding fo what marketing channels you’ll be using, and what content/assets will be going out when will help ensure everything goes smoothly during the busy period.

 

Batch create your marketing assets

If a marketing plan is created in advance there is nothing stopping you with batch creating the marketing assets in advance. If you are in your business alone this can be a great way of freeing up extra capacity in Q4, but doing the creation of your marketing in Q3. But even if you have a team it’s still useful as can ensure you have signed everything off in advance and whoever is responsible for marketing can be focused on being reactive during that time.

 

 

They strengthen the business from an administration and operations perspective

 

With Q4 being the busiest time of the year for businesses, it can put extra strain on every part of the business. What works ok when your business is operating at a mid-level can become very fragile during a peak period. Strategic business owners use summer to look into key aspects of their business that they know are often the areas that feel the strain when sales are high. This can be anything from improving systems, refining onboarding and offboarding. A business owner could decide, in an effort to increase capacity, to take on more people and use this period of time to document processes and delegate responsibilities.

 

They prepare financially by setting targets, creating budgets and making forecasts

 

To have the most profitable Q4 yet, you have to balance increasing revenue whilst not increasing costs at the same level. This isn’t going to happen by accident. It needs proper consideration and this is where financial targets, budgets and forecasting come in. A business owner will set revenue targets. The information gathered from review the last Q4 and the year-to-date will help with this. Then the focus is on expenditure. Budgets for marketing and increasing contractor/freelancer support will help with this. This combined will help the business owner to generate a profit forecast (to see on paper whether it can be the most profitable Q4 yet), and then a cash-flow forecast can be created to identify in advance if there are any issues.

 

 

That’s it. You now know how strategic business owners use summer to create their most profitable Q4 yet.

 

If on the 1st of October you decide you want to make Q4 your most profitable quarter and you are going to start thinking about how to make that happen then, then you are already behind. As seen, there are multiple things to be considered and done in order to create a profitable quarter. Taking action months in advance means the business can be ready from the 1st of October.

 

By the time Q4 starts, strategic business owners are clear on what they are selling, how they’ll market it, and how they’ll ensure they are generating demand and delivering in the most profitable way possible.

 

As shown, that doesn’t happen by accident. It takes careful consideration and preparation in advance, which is why strategic business owners start preparing or their most profitable Q4 months in advance.

 

I hope you’ve found this blog post useful. If you have, do let me know over on Instagram or LinkedIn.

 

And if you’d like support in preparing for your most profitable quarter yet, then I’d love to support you.

DM me on LinkedIn or  Instagram saying Q4 or fill in my contact form here.