Planning for a Successful 2017 – by Guy Maddalone
“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” –Benjamin Franklin
November is a good time to review how your agency did in the current year, and to start planning your strategy for the upcoming year. What goals did you accomplish? How far along did you get on the other important objectives? It’s time to take inventory and see where your business is trending. Look at your goals for 2017 and determine how realistic they are. If they are, what resources do you need to put in place to reach those goals? Do you need to spend more on marketing? Or recruiting? These are some of the things to be thinking about at this time of year.
Why are goals and metrics important?
Business goals provide a sense of direction for your agency and help see if investments are worth the time and money spent on them. I believe goals should be at least 5 years long. At GTM we have long term 10-year goals broken into 5-year, 3-year, and one-year durations. This way our one-year objectives are part of our long-term goal.
Metrics are a good way to measure goals. For example, the way to measure your revenue or profit goal is looking at the actual revenue on a monthly or quarterly basis versus what you forecasted those targets to be. Or maybe you had a project goal of offering a new service like corporate backup care, and reaching that goal required ten specific steps. The metric for measuring this target would be to see how many of the ten steps you actually accomplished. By carefully monitoring your results, you can see the likelihood of reaching an objective and make a decision about either adjusting the goal to something more realistic, or to invest more time and resources to reach it.
What goals should you consider?
A common agency goal to look at would be your placement goals, both long-term and short-term. How many new families became clients this year? How many of your families returned for another placement? What revenues are tied to those placements, and how does it compare to your anticipated number of placements and revenue?
If your agency offers backup care services, an objective to measure is the number of backup care hours used versus the number you anticipated. Compare the number of hours requested versus the number of hours served, and use the hourly pay rate to determine your revenue forecast for backup care for the following year.
Conversion rates are another common goal that agencies consider; this shows how many families were interested in your services versus how many of those families actually became clients. Look back one year and see what you forecasted for 2016 at the end of 2015. Notice the difference between your forecast for 2016 and what your actual conversion rate was. This will help you plan your conversion rate goals for 2017.
Once you’ve assessed your 2016 results, you need to identify if your goals were realistic, and consider resetting any of them to make them more attainable, based on the resources you decide to invest in them, for the new year.
What should you look at for 2017 planning?
Strategic planning for a new year requires consideration of many things, including your agency’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats; this is also known as a SWOT analysis.
I’ve found it to be important for the business owner or principle to think as an outside investor when looking at these attributes. Honestly assess what your strengths are; did you have a high client satisfaction rate? Are your screening methods superior to your competitors’ methods? Identifying your strengths will help you formulate a plan to continue them in 2017.
In looking at weaknesses, identify where they are. Do you have trouble recruiting? Do you need to work on your brand awareness? Are your sales lagging? Knowing these weaknesses will assist in setting goals to overcome them in the new year.
Turning those weaknesses into opportunities is the next step in planning for 2017. If you fell short of your client referral goals for 2016, is there an opportunity to double those 2016 referrals for 2017? If that is true, would it be necessary to hire another staff member for that newfound demand?
Identifying threats is the last piece of the puzzle; these are things that could hurt your chances of meeting your goals. Online job boards have certainly impacted the agency industry; do you feel they are a threat? Are local competitors posing a threat? If so, determine what percentage of your business they might take away from you, and then factor that into your 2017 planning. Will your agency’s reputation take a hit if you get any negative press or poor online reviews from families? What steps do you need to take to keep these threats at bay?
Through careful assessment of your 2016 goals and using those to meticulously plan for 2017, you are more likely to create attainable goals that help your agency grow, along with expanding on what you do well, and improving in the areas where you fell short.
Take a little time and have a successful 2017 planning session!
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