Summer is over. There is nothing you can do about summer. That planning should have taken place last spring.
Jim Rohn, one of the greatest personal development trainers, once said, “ants think winter all summer and think summer all winter.”
So, if you want a great end of 2024, then it is time to plan how to achieve this goal. Here’s an easy five step process:
1.Decide what the best fall ever looks like.
Ask your employees. They’ll have ideas. Is it revenues $X higher than last year? Ending the year with X maintenance plans? Generating X referrals? Finishing a huge project?
Without knowing where you are going, you’ll never know whether you get there.
2.Communicate what the goal is and establish what the rewards will be for reaching the goal.
This generally is a type of contest. The prize doesn’t have to be monetary. It can be time off. Christmas this year falls on a Wednesday. What goal has to be reached so the company can afford to give everyone the option of the two days after Christmas off with pay or two days after New Year’s with pay?
For this calculation, take the cost of two days of pay plus the benefits associated with those two days (FICA, medicare, etc.) and divide by your gross margin. This is the break even revenues that have to be generated for those two days.
Remember that you need to add these revenues to the revenues you’ve already budgeted for the quarter.
For example, if the revenues needed for the two days is $50,000 and you’ve budgeted $500,000 in revenues for the quarter, then the goal is $550,000 in revenues.
3.Get suggestions on how to reach the goal.
First, you need buy in from your employees. With everyone having a stake in the outcome, they will be more willing to help and do the work necessary to reach the goal. Get their ideas. Implement their ideas.
4.Track progress.
Put a thermometer on the wall where everyone can see progress. They will be incentivized to work harder to reach the goal as the company gets closer to the goal.
5.Celebrate the win.
Thank everyone for their hard work towards reaching the goal. And, if the reward is two days off with pay, then after they get their two days off, find out what they did during those two days. It will make for good reminders the next time you have a contest.
This might seem simplistic. It’s actually easy to plan. Implementation is the key.
If the entire company is involved, and they want the “prize at the end”, then they will work towards achieving the goal. Track the progress and win.
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Ruth King is well known as “The Profitability Master.” She is passionate about helping small business owners become profitable and stay profitable. For over 40 years she has coached, trained, and helped contractors and others achieve the business growth and goals they wanted to achieve.
Contact Ruth by emailing ruthking@hvacchannel.tv.
