As the mini budget announcement and its swift U-turn showed us, there’s plenty of uncertainty ahead for us in the UK.
Whilst you can’t prepare for every possible outcome, you can take steps to enter the new year feeling as ready as you’ll ever be. Here are our tips to prepare a business plan ready for 2023… you’ll feel much better if you don’t leave it until the last minute.
Review your vision to set realistic goals
There’s a chance your vision has changed as your business has grown so it may be time to revisit. Ask yourself what your business vision is. What is it that you want to achieve in the long term?
If you have a clear vision, it makes it much easier to set realistic goals and milestones to get you there.
Once you’ve established the vision, and the steps you need to take, share it with your wider team. You can’t achieve it on your own! If you support your people in the right way, give them guidance, and make it clear what you’re trying to achieve together, it’ll put your business on the front foot. This is especially important during uncertain times.
Your goals and milestones will effectively help you prepare a business plan for next year.
Create a strategy
Like we’ve said, 2023 is set to be a year of uncertainty, a lot could happen and change. It’s all a bit up in the air really, but don’t panic, instead spend some time creating a realistic business plan for 2023 and set some strategies that your business will work to.
Your business strategy should cover aspects including sales, business development, financial and marketing as they’re all linked. Make sure you revisit these strategies (and the tactics you’re using) to review progress throughout the year.
If you’ve never done a strategy or business plan, you could do a SWOT analysis as a starting point. It helps you to focus on your business strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, then you plan with these in mind. If you’ve done a SWOT analysis before, revisit it to see if anything has changed.
Create a budget
A budget is a key planning tool that every business owner should create. A clear business budget will help you forecast your earnings, plan your expenditure and prevent you from over or underspending.
Setting aside some time to create a budget will really help you understand if costs are essential or optional. It also gives the various areas of the business costs to work to, and sales to aim for.
Having a set budget will also make it easier for you to monitor cash flow, understand your profit margins and set accurate prices for your services and/or products. In practice, a budget will help you understand how many sales or projects you need to complete, which will help you set more accurate targets.
Review customer feedback
Look back over the customer feedback you’ve received over the last year. Reviewing it should help you identify any areas that may need change, or anything that you’re doing well and need to continue with. You could even set some KPI’s centred around customer satisfaction to encourage you to ask for customer feedback regularly, and keep track throughout the year.
Review your product/service costs
You should be regularly reviewing the cost of your product or service in line with your competitors, demand and production costs. However during times of uncertainty, it’s more important than ever to review the cost of providing your services and therefore the price you charge your customers and clients.
Consider investment
If you’re wanting to accelerate your business growth quicker than you can organically, you’ll likely be looking for investment to achieve this. Your goals, vision, forecast and plans will help you get to a position where you’ll know if your business will need investment, and how much you might need.
This means you can spend time preparing for investment. If you’re unsure whether or not your business needs investment to achieve your goals, or you’ve not considered it, we can help with that!
Need help planning and looking ahead?
Need a hand to prepare a business plan for 2023? We’re here to help! Feel free to get in touch for a chat to see how we could support you.
