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Want to know my top Q1 planning tips for small business owners. Quarterly planning is always important in business, but Q1 planning is especially important. Q1 set the tone for the rest of your year. A great Q1 will set your business up for success. A poor Q1 will mean you are on the back foot and trying to catch up for the rest of the year. Keep on reading to find out my Q1 planning tips for small business owners.
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Q1 PLANNING TIPS FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS
Tip 1: Ensure your Q1 goals directly support achieving your annual goals
As with planning for any quarter you’ll first need to set your goals. As mentioned earlier Q1 is the most important quarter of the year as it sets the tone for the rest of the year and it sets your business up for success or struggle.
To set your Q1 goals you need to look at your annual goals and then work out what goal you need to set for your business to ensure that achieving your Q1 goals means you are on track for achieving your annual goals.
Usually there are three methods for turning an annual goal into a quarterly goal.
Method 1: Divide by 4
This method works best for quantitative goals. For example, if you have a goal to hit £100,000 in revenue in 2024 then you would divide that target by 4 and have a Q1 goal of £25,000
Method 2: Divide based on seasonality
In Method 1 I shared the easiest way of turning an annual goal into a quarterly goal, which is to divide the annual figure by 4. However, most businesses have seasonality and there is fluctuations with some months and quarters doing better than others. By looking at past data you should be able to understand the seasonality of your business and then set your Q1 target based on that.
So if we stick with the example above of wanting to achieve £100k in revenue in 2024, but when looking at your past figures you realise on average 35% of your income for the year comes in Q1 then rather than setting a goal of £25,000 you’d set a goal of £35,0000
Method 3: Identify certain steps
Not all goals are quantitative. Some goals are based around creating something, launching something, starting something etc. For these goals you are likely to have to set a goal around achieving certain steps in a process. For example, if your annual goal is to host a live event for over 100 people then for your Q1 goal might be to find and book a venue.
Tip 2: Consider all your possible actions before making your action plan
For most goals there will be a number of different ways for achieving the goal and it is very powerful to give yourself the freedom to think about all of the possible options, without committing to taking those actions. Very often when we are planning for ourselves we’ll automatically not consider certain options because we have limiting beliefs or it is something we don’t personally want to do.
So before you create your action plan give yourself the freedom of thinking of options, without making a commitment. Imagine you are helping another business owner out. What suggestions would you give them? Write all of the suggestions down so you can see the breadth of options available to you.
Before you create your plan give yourself the freedom to write down all of the actions you could take. Writing down your options without committing to taking that action will hopefully free you up to explore all the options you are aware of (and remember there will likely be some ways that aren’t even on your radar.
| SET YOUR BUSINESS UP FOR A SUCCESSFUL Q1 – JOIN START STRONG
Start Strong is an intimate business accelerator for service-based business owners who have set themselves big goals for 2024 and know that they need to improve their marketing and consistently take action to have an outstanding first quarter that sets them up for a sensational year. Inside Start Strong you’ll get the training, support and accountability to follow your plan, smash your goals and set you business up for an amazing year! |
Tip 3: Create a combined action plan
If you have multiple goals for your business then it is vital that when you are planning rather than creating a plan per goal that you create a combined plan.
Depending on the depth you want to go into you can either do this on a monthly basis and list out the actions you’ll take in January, February and March. Or you can do this on a quarterly basis.
When I work one-to-one with mentoring clients (you can check out my mentoring services here) we’ll create a quarterly plan on a week-by-week basis. This means every single week my clients know what they should be focusing on and what actions need to happen.
When creating your combined action plan you’ll need to aware of which actions are dependent and which actions are independent. Some actions can happen at any time, whereas some actions need to happen in a sequence. For example, you can’t publish a book before you’ve written a book and you can’t sell a course (that is meant to be accessed instantly) if you haven’t already created and uploaded the course.
The reason why combined planning is so important is that if you have multiple goals it might be that the plan for each goal seems achievable. But when you combine the plans you might realise that too much is happening at one specific time in the quarter and delivering that plan will be physically impossible. Realising this in advance means you can adjust. You can look at getting extra support from another person or you can adjust the plans so that timing wise there is less pressure on the same moment in the quarter.
Tip 4: Set metrics and milestones so you can monitor your progress
Unfortunately not all plans will generate the results you expected. That is the nature of business, which is why you’ll need to monitor your progress across Q1. In order to do that you’ll need to set clear metrics and milestone.
Metrics can be reviewed on a regular basis. For a Q1 goal I’d recommend reviewing on a weekly basis. For example, if your revenue goal for Q1 is £35,000 then every week you’ll calculate what your revenue for the quarter to date is and make a note of that.
If you want to work with 20 clients across the quarter then every week you can review the total number of clients you’ve worked with to date.
As mentioned earlier not all goals re quantitative and so you might not need to review on a weekly basis. Instead you can have milestones. For example, if you planning on launching a course you could have milestones around outlining the course, creating the course, uploading the course, creating the sales page and then launching the course.
| SET YOUR BUSINESS UP FOR A SUCCESSFUL Q1 – JOIN START STRONG
Start Strong is an intimate business accelerator for service-based business owners who have set themselves big goals for 2024 and know that they need to improve their marketing and consistently take action to have an outstanding first quarter that sets them up for a sensational year. Inside Start Strong you’ll get the training, support and accountability to follow your plan, smash your goals and set you business up for an amazing year! |
Tip 5: Consider what could stop you from following your plan and get the necessary support
Q1 planning is just the beginning. Once you’ve got the plan you’ll have to implement the plan and sometimes that is easier said than done. Once you’ve finished your plan have a think about what could stop you from following your plan.
It might be that your plan requires a certain skill that you need to improve. If so, then get the support you need. It might be that you can buy a course, attend a training or work with a specialist.
It might be that you look at your plan and it feels very tight timewise. If so, you could make changes to the plan and move some things into Q2. Or you can hire someone to help either with delivering some aspects of the plan or do other work in the business that frees you up.
It might be that your have the skills and time to deliver the plan, but you know what you are like with following through with plans. In that case investing in accountability so that you have someone else who knows what you are meant to be doing and will check-in to make sure you are implementing your plan.
That’s it. You now know my top Q1 planning tips for small business owners.
I’ve shared my top Q1 planning tips for small business owners and now it is time to you to stop reading and start planning. Taking the time to properly plan for your Q1 will give you the best chance of achieving your Q1 goals. And since it is the first quarter of the year it will help you to have a strong start to the year, which will put you on track for achieving your annual goals.
If you’d like further support to ensure you have a successful Q1 come and join Start Strong.
Start Strong is an intimate business accelerator for service-based business owners who want to have an outstanding first quarter that sets them up for a sensational year.
You’ll get the planning support to ensure you have the best plan possible and then the training, support and accountability to implement your plan and achieve your Q1 goals.
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