I can’t stress enough how important it is to check in on your results at this time of year. Too many people focus on having a break instead of working out in advance what they need to be focused on in the new year to gain better outcomes.

I’ve highlighted some areas below that I’ve found absolutely critical to review. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be in the perfect position to reset your goals for the year ahead.

Review your pricing

• Sales analysis – units sold or $ sales, the effect of any promotions you’ve run, effectiveness of the sales team. Are there any interesting trends? Is there anything different that might be impacting your sales this year vs previous years?
• Margin analysis – which products or services are most profitable? What could you do to improve the margin on your products and services? What has been the impact of any discounts you may have offered? What has been the impact of any price increases you may have put in place? Where are you making most of your money? How effective is your cross selling and upselling.
• Compare to competitors – How much do you really know about your competitors? How do your prices compare? How do your products and services compare? How close are your offerings to those of your competitors and what might you be able to do to differentiate yourself more?

Review your service

• Customer analysis – Who are you serving? Who are your most profitable customers? Who are your least profitable? Where is the potential in your customer base to ramp things up?
• Service Highlights – What were some of the ‘flashes of brilliance’ that you delivered to your customers? How can you use the good things you’ve done with customers to attract more of them?
• Service Lowlights – Where did you mess up this year? What complaints did you receive this year? What can you change or improve to make sure fewer complaints are received?
• Ask your customers for feedback – Now is a perfect time to survey your customers, seek feedback through focus groups, interviews, or phone calls. Go to your most important customers and start making contact to reinforce your commitment to them and to making changes that your customers are looking for in the future.

Review your Team

• Performance to date – Have you scheduled performance review meetings with all team members before the end of the year? Do you have formal documents to support the performance management process in your business? If not, now’s the time to implement the system and kick off the new year with tangible targets and clear benchmarks that you expect your team to focus on in the year ahead.
• Rewards – incentives and bonuses can be a great way of rewarding the contributions that your team members make to the business. They can also be really effective at increasing activity during slow times. For example, I just ran a workshop for a team and one thing the owner of the business said to them was that if they met a specific target between now and the week before the holidays, each employee would receive a cheque for $5000 to spend on whatever they want. Wow! There was an immediate buzz and each employee wrote down what they would spend the money on. This is now being displayed in the workplace as a reminder of what the team is committed to. The goal is realistic and the team engaged!
• Career Development Plan and Discussion – even if you have a performance review discussion with your team members each year, how clear are their career development plans? Career development is all about enhancing the performance of your team members and helping them achieve what they want from their careers. There’s a lot to be said for the saying “You have to look after people”. The more you look after your team, the more they’ll look after you. If you disagree, my question to you is this – “What’s your view of your team?” Is it that they exist to make you look good and make you money? Or, is it that the team is the most important resource in my business because they look after the customers, which in turn look after the business? Now’s the time to have career development discussions with your team members to set them and you up for success in the year ahead.

Review your financials

• Actual vs Budget – How are you tracking against your revenue and profit targets each month? Are you ahead? Are you behind? Are you on track? Depending on where you are in relation to your budget, this will determine where your decision-making needs to be to change things in the new year. I look at it this way. If I’m on track I need to work on taking it to the next level. If I’m behind, I need to assess what will give me the greatest opportunity to get back on track (and quickly!). If I’m way ahead of my plan, either I was too soft in my targets, or I need to stretch myself further to make it a little more challenging. Notice none of the options are to just keep plodding along.
• Cashflow – reviewing inventory levels or work underway is important at this time of the year because you might be able to move some of it before the end of the year and put some extra dollars in the bank account. Review your debtors. Who owes you money? How long have they owed you? Now is the time to tidy up your debtors and deposit those dollars into the account too! How much do you owe your creditors? Now might be a good time to engage with them to update them with your plans for the new year and maybe negotiate better terms.
• Key Expenses – direct costs associated with raw materials, components and other bits and pieces that make up your products are typically a large expense known as “cost of goods sold – COGS” – catch up with suppliers and discuss your plans for the new year and get them onboard. Look at your other expenses. What’s happening there? Any trends? Any anomalies? Any opportunities to reduce them? A focus on expenses is always important.

Review your objectives

• Business growth – How fast are you growing now? How much are you going to grow your business by next year? 5% or 10%? What about 20% or 50%? Which number you choose is entirely up to you. The worst thing you can do is not have one to aim for! My view is simple and very aligned to the saying “Aim for the moon! Even if you miss, you’ll be amongst the stars!”
• Financial targets – What’s the magic number that you’re aiming for? Set it and then work backwards to determine how you’re going to achieve it. I did this exercise recently and it made my planning so much more realistic and achievable!
• Personal aims – Why are you doing all this? What do you want to get out of it all? What would be a really cool reward for the year when you achieve your objectives? Don’t be afraid to dream. I conducted a goal setting session recently and the empowerment, fulfilment, and focus you get when you articulate your goals clearly is amazing!

You’re ready to reset your goals!

Now that you’ve reviewed where you’re at, it’s time to think about what needs to be done to get you to where you want to go.

Resetting your goals is not about changing them necessarily. It’s about checking in and making sure that you’re on track and if you’re not, making some decisions on what you need to do to get back on track. It’s also possible that you were completely unrealistic with your objectives at the beginning of the year, so at the half way point, it’s a good time to see how you’re going.

To me, this is a great time of the year to do this exercise. I work with businesses to conduct the type of review I’ve outlined above. In the next Momentum Tip I’m going to take you through a structured goal setting activity that will build on your performance review.