Quarterly planning for small business owners

Are you a small business owner that knows you need to be doing quarterly planning for your small business, but you aren’t sure where to start? Well every business, regardless of size, should be planning for the future. Ideally you should create an annual business plan and then have quarterly business planning sessions too. A lot can change in a year and the combination of annual planning and quarterly planning will maximise the chances of your business achieving its goals. But quarterly planning for a small business is different to a big business. Keep on reading to find out more about quarterly planning for small business owners.

 

 

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Please note: This is a very simplified quarterly planning process. It is aimed primarily for solo and micro service-based business owners.

 

Quarterly planning versus annual planning

If you are already planning for your business on an annual basis you might be thinking “Is it necessary to plan on a quarterly basis too?”. Annual planning is really important and I go into this in great detail right here – The importance of annual planning as a small business owner.

 

Annual planning is great for thinking big and setting the overall focus for the year. Annual planning can give you the space to think about making significant changes in your business such as changing ideal client, pivoting niche, repositioning your business, introducing new services, growing your team etc.

 

Whereas quarterly planning, with it’s reduced timeframe, allows you to concentrate much more on the details. When you have goals that are over a shorter timeframe you can focus more on how they are going to be achieve and map out more thoroughly what resources (time, money, personnel) that you need.

 

I’m so passionate about annual planning I have a service dedicated to annual planning. You can find out more about my annual strategic planning days here.

 

QUARTERLY PLANNING FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS 

Step 1: Review the last quarter

As with all business planning sessions you should start with a review. In this case because you are planning for the quarter ahead you should review the last quarter. Dig out the goals and review how the business did. Make a clear note of the goals achieved and not achieved. For all the goals you didn’t achieve make a decision about whether they are still important to the business or not. So you can decide whether you need to carry that goal over to the next quarter.

 

Step 2: Set your quarterly goals

The point of having a quarterly planning session is so that you have a clear understanding of what is going to happen over the quarter in order to achieve your goals. So you need to those goals in place before you do anything.

Hopefully, you’ve set some annual business goals. Now is the time to review those goals, see how on track you are and then make quarterly goals that will help you achieve those bigger annual goals.

Sometimes you’ll have business goals that will take the whole year to achieve and each quarter you are just moving closer and closer. For example, you might have a sales goal of £160,000 and your goal is for each quarter to generate £40,000 in sales. Or you might be aware of the seasonality in your business and your quarterly goals might be £30,000, £30,000, £30,000 and £70,000.

And sometimes you’ll have business goals that can be completed within a quarter. For example, you might have the goal to create and launch a digital product. That can easily be a goal that is achieved within one quarter.

Once you’ve got your list of goals have a look over them and check whether they are SMART. If you’ve never come across this acronym before it is often used to help ensure people create clear goals and whilst different people use the acronym in different ways I use it as follows:

S is for SPECIFIC – Is your goal specific enough that someone else could easily tell if you had or hadn’t achieved the goal?

M is for MEASURABLE – Have you been able to quantify your goal in some way so you can measure whether you’ve achieved or goal or not?

A is for ACTIONABLE – Is your goal something that you have control over? Are you able to take clear actions in order to achieve your goal?

R is for REALISTIC – Does your goal feel achievable? (As a business owner there is nothing wrong with having a goal that is stretching you, but you have to believe at some level it is possible for you)

T is for TIMED –  Have you put a clear deadline for when you want to have achieved the goal by?

If your goals pass the SMART test it is time to move on to the next step.

 

Step 3: Consider your possible actions

Now that you are clear on what you want to achieve over the next quarter it is time to work out what what actions could be taken to achieve those goals.

At this stage think of all the possible actions. The fact is there are usually multiple ways to achieving a goal and in the next stage you’ll work out your actual plan of action, but for now let your imagination go well.

Actions can usually be broken down into two categories: sequential and independent. Sequential actions are actions that need to happen in a certain order. Whereas independent actions can happen at any time and aren’t reliant on anything else.

For example, if your plan is to launch a digital product then there might be sequential actions such create the product, edit the product, upload the product and then launch the product. You can’t upload the product if you haven’t already created the product and have the necessary tech in place to upload and sell the product.

 

 

Step 4: Put your action plan for the quarter together

You’ve got your goals and you’ve got options for how to achieve those goals. Now it is time to decide what options you want to go forward with, identify WHO is responsible and allocate budget if applicable. It may be that you, the business owner, are responsible for everything – that’s fine. But by getting clear on who is responsible you can start to see if capacity wise it is possible for someone to achieve everything that technically is in their responsibility for the upcoming quarter.

Depending on how you prefer to work you might decide to create your action plan on a monthly or weekly basis. But the main thing is you should be able to see over a set period of time (that is smaller than the quarter) what actions are happening to support a specific goal and who is responsible for taking those actions.

 

WANT HELP TO MAKE YOUR NEXT 6 MONTHS YOUR BEST IN BUSINESS?  Having an action plan is great, but it is just the beginning. Many business owners (because they lack the skills, knowledge, motivation or confidence) fail to follow through and actually implement their plan. That’s why I offer 1-to-1 mentoring. Where during our time together I’d run two quarterly planning session, but then you’ll also get the training, support and accountability to ensure you implement your plan and achieve your business goals. To find out more about my 1:1 Business and Marketing Mentoring click here.

 

Step 5: Set your metrics and milestones

If you want to achieve your quarterly business goals then the worst thing you can do is spend the time having a quarterly planning session, make the plan and then never look at it again until the end of the quarter. A quarter is actually quite a long time so you need to be tracking your progress. This is where having metrics and milestones will help you.

Metrics should be directly related to your goal (this is why having a goal that is measurable is super helpful). How often you need to track will depend on the goals. However, getting into the habit of having a regular check-in on a monthly, fortnightly or weekly basis will put your business in a great place. It doesn’t have take much time, but will just mean your business goals stay top of mind and if for some reason progress isn’t where it should be you can notice sooner rather than later.

Whereas metrics are monitored on a regular basis milestones are specific moments that are outlined on the plan, usually due to sequential actions. For example, if you plan to launch a podcast on the 15th of January you might set a milestone of having everything you need to submit to Apple Podcasts by the 5th of January since it can take up to 10 days for a new podcast to be approved.

 

Step 6: Take action and review 

The quarterly planning process is complete. At this point you’ve got an action plan for the quarter ahead and it is time to get to work.

Remember in business nothing is guaranteed and not everything will go to plan, which is why it is so important to make sure you do take a moment to review the progress through the quarter. Check those metrics on a regular basis and if you can see that actions are happening, but the outcome isn’t want you are expected then you may need to adjust.

 

That’s it. You now know how to do quarterly planning as a small business owner.

As I said at the beginning this is quarterly planning for small business owners so I’ve tried to keep the process fairly simple. Stage 4 (The Action Plan) is where depending on the size of your business and the amount of sequential actions you have you might go into more detail.

 

I hope reading this blog post has helped you and you now feel confident to have a quarterly planning session.

 

However, if the thought of doing this all by yourself is daunting then I can help you. DM me on LinkedIn or  Instagram saying QUARTER.

Or you can fill in my contact form (I reply withing 48 hours usually so keep an eye out for a reply). 

 

WANT HELP PLANNING FOR THE NEXT 12 MONTHS?  This blog post has focused on planning for the next quarter, but it can be hard to plan for the next quarter when you aren’t clear about the bigger picture. I have a tried-and-tested process that I’ve used for years to guide business owners to set goals for their business for the upcoming 12 months and then map out the overarching strategy to achieve that. Oh and did I mention it only takes one day! You fill in a questionnaire before our day together. Then on the day I’ll guide you through my annual planning process, take notes so you are free to just talk and then create your annual plan and timeline. The next day you can get back to your day-to-day work and you’ll receive your plan and timeline. It couldn’t be easier! For more information and to book a 2024 Strategy Day click here.