There are four simple questions to ask yourself as you prepare your business for 2015:
- What are our goals?
- What are our plans to achieve the goals?
- What are the challenges that could de-rail our plans?
- What is the timeline to reach our goals?
GPCT. Remember those four letters as you plan for 2015.
Two Truths for 2015
There are two truths that every business needs before worrying about road maps.
1. You have to be good.
Creating work worth talking about is at the center a business’ success. Whether it’s a product or service, you need to bring your best to get noticed and continue to grow, especially online. No amount of planning will fix a product or service that isn’t helpful.
2. You have to connect.
Amazon, Wal-mart and Best Buy are the faceless giants that offer anything for nothing right now. That’s not you.
Your business will succeed and grow when you connect with people who want to work with you. Fortunately, using digital media effectively can connect you with the customers and collaboraters that matter, no matter where you live.
4 Questions to Build Your Road Map
Having a solid product or service and the ability to connect means you are ready to build your road map. As a business, you will want to walk through your GPCT.
Most importantly, don’t just think about your answers. A brief moment of reflection does little for following through on your road map. Instead, write your answers down and tell someone. As soon as you are public with your goals, there is accountability. Welcome this accountability so you remember and continually move towards your goals for the year.
Now, let’s take a look at each step of the road map.
Goals
Before you create the road map, you need to know the destination. Every year I conduct a personal and annual review which creates goals for the upcoming year. This post walks through different ways to create personal and business goals.
In short, look for a few key categories and set quantifiable goals within those categories. For my business, those categories include: revenue, content and projects.
Within each category there are specific pieces that make up the goals. For example, within revenue, 9 Clouds looks at number of clients, size of contracts and alternative revenue streams. Within content, we highlight the different types of content, and within projects, we define the types of projects we want to pursue.
In your business, you probably have two or three categories of goals (and I’m guessing revenue is one of them). Within each category, think of the pieces that make up the goal and quantify those specific pieces. For example, X number of new clients, $X average contract value and X% of revenue from products. This specific and quantiable breakdown helps you forecast and modify your goals based on how your business changes throughout 2015.
Plans
When you know your goals, it is time to plan how to reach them. Plans are important because it breaks a big audacious goal into manageable pieces and forces you to check-in on your goals to ensure progress is being made.
When we talk to businesses on our consultations, we break down goals as a sales funnel. Here’s an example.
You may need five more clients to reach your 2015 revenue goals. If one out of ten people you talk to purchase, you would need to talk to 50 people to reach the goal. If you know you need 1,000 people to visit your website to get one person to request more information and talk to you, your business need 50,000 people to visit your website in 2015.
Knowing the specific conversion rates helps you plan. You can ask: What do we need to do to attract 50,000 website visitors? If we can’t get that many web visitors, what can we do to increase our conversion rate or attract business from other sources?
All of these questions help your business focus on what works and what is needed to reach your goals in 2015.
Challenges
Laying out a plan will quickly make clear challenges that must be overcome. Thinking ahead about potential challenges will prepare your business to bypass these challenges and move towards your goal.
If you need 50,000 website visitors, but your website doesn’t work well on a mobile phone, you have a big challenge that can be solved. If you can only talk to two people a week, you have a significant challenge that needs to be fixed to reach your goals.
Think ahead of the potential challenges to your proposed plan. Then, identify the quickest ways to solve these challenges or the best action to take if these challenges become a reality.
Timeline
When are you going to start?
The biggest barrier to success is not starting. The resistence, as Steven Pressfield calls it, helps distract us from what we need to do to start.
If we create a timeline, we have to get it done. As was once noted, Saturday Night Live does not go on the air because it is ready, it goes on the air because it’s 11:35 p.m. on Saturday. We need to tell ourselves and our employees when things will be completed so we work in short bursts and avoid the trap of Parkinson’s Law.
Create quarterly check-in points and break your goals into the shortest time periods possible to work in sprints instead of marathons.
An Amazing Year Awaits
Take time this year to reflect on what went well in 2014 and what didn’t go well in 2014. Then, learn from the year that has passed.
Looking ahead, you can build the life and business you want. Identify where you want to be in 12 months and then break down that vision into actionable steps.
We’re here to help. Think of the four letters of GPCT and think big for 2015. Anything is possible.
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