Why Most Business Owners Get Year-End Reviews Wrong
Summary:
In this episode, Sonja Jones shares insights from her Campbell presentation, focusing on key metrics for business planning and growth. She discusses the importance of celebrating wins, understanding gross sales, and analyzing client growth and revenue. The conversation also covers lessons learned, goal setting for the future, and the significance of having a clear mission statement. Sonja emphasizes the need for visibility and consistency in business strategies as she looks ahead to 2025.
Key Metrics and Financial Analysis:
Celebrating wins is important to keep the team motivated. GIP celebrated its first staff retreat, intern, six-figure year in gross sales, and major contract.
Understanding gross sales before expenses is essential for financial clarity. You need to know what you made before you deduct expenses to accurately assess the business's financial health.
To calculate your growth rate, take the current year's gross sales, divide it by the previous year's gross sales, then subtract one, and multiply by 100 to get the percentage. For GIP, the growth rate from 2023 to 2024 was 39.8%.
Client growth can be misleading. Although GIP saw a dip in the number of clients, their revenue increased, showing that focusing on revenue is key. It's more important to maximize revenue than to just add more clients.
Analyzing sales by product and service is crucial. GIP tracks income from monthly bookkeeping, QuickBooks setup, end-of-year tax prep, consultations, and QuickBooks online subscriptions. It's helpful to use the products and services feature in QuickBooks to see which clients are most profitable.
Strategic Planning and Goal Setting:
Visibility is vital, especially on social media. GIP invested in a social media coach and content creator to improve their reach.
Set clear, actionable goals for your business. GIP's revenue goal was 250K, and although they didn't meet that, they surpassed their previous year's gross revenue. They were at 86% of their goal by their staff retreat.
Your mission statement should guide all business decisions. GIP's mission is to "empower entrepreneurs to know their numbers and position their organizations for maximum impact".
It is important to be intentional about the platforms you use and tailor your message to your audience. For example, GIP uses LinkedIn for CFO clients and other platforms for GIP Academy.
Consistency is key in offerings. For GIP, the word for 2025 is consistency.
You must be open to adapting your strategies based on feedback and data.
Additional Notes:
Data analysis is important to understanding client needs and how to improve services.
You should always reflect on lessons learned to improve your business.
Financial literacy is key for entrepreneurs.
Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction to Growth Hacks
01:09 - Key Metrics for Business Planning
02:33 - Celebrating Wins and Growth
03:57 - Understanding Gross Sales and Growth
05:49 - Client Growth and Revenue Insights
08:37 - Sales by Product and Service Analysis
10:24 - Lessons Learned and Future Goals
12:15 - Goal Setting and Strategic Planning
19:49 - Team Systems and Mission Statement
22:36 - Final Thoughts and Looking Ahead
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