How to Use Annual Planning to Increase Your Business’ Income in 2025

Want to know how to use annual planning to increase your business’ income in 2025? Wanting to see year-on-year growth in business is absolutely normal, but setting a goal around increasing your business’ income in 2025 and achieving that increase are two very different things. You need more than a goal. You need a roadmap and that is where annual planning comes in. Keep on reading to find out how to use annual planning to increase your business’ income in 2025.

 

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HOW TO USE ANNUAL PLANNING TO INCREASE YOUR BUSINESS’ INCOME IN 2025

 

Step 1: Review your business’ past performance

Before doing any planning for the year before you should also review the past. In this instance since the focus is on increasing your business’ income in 2025 you’ll want to look at your income for 2024 as a minimum. And ideally you’ll want to look at past years as well.

For as many years as possible you want to calculate your total income for the year and it is also very helpful to then have further breakdowns. It could be that you have data for income on a monthly or quarterly basis. It might be that you have data on sales for each product or service across the year. Gather as much data as possible so you’ve got it to analyse and can use when planning ahead.

Then for the last year you’ll also want to look at what worked and didn’t work from a marketing and sales perspective. Having the sales figures is one thing, but being able to match what was happening in the business marketing and sales wise with what was happening revenue wise is key. For example, you might have seen a spike in sales but that was a result of having a launch or making an appearance in the press. Therefore you can identify why that spike happened and that helps when planning future marketing and sales activity.

 

Step 2: Set Clear Income Goals

To avoid any confusion saying that you “want to increase your business’ income” is not a goal. You need to get specific. At this point you should have a clear income figure for 2024 and you can use that as the benchmark and then set your income goal for 2025.

How you set your income goal initially is up to you. It might be that you are someone who is quite logical with setting goals and you decide to set an income goal that is a certain percentage increase. For example, if you made 80K last year you might want 100% increase so set 160K as the income goal. Or you might be someone who prefers to set goals from an energetic perspective. It might be that a certain number feels right and you decide to go with that.

At this stage the way you choose your income goal isn’t important because through doing the annual planning you’ll be able to start to assess the feasibility of achieving that goal. So for now just choose something that feels good to you.

Sidenote: An income, or revenue, goal is just one of the three financial goals every solopreneur or small business owner should set. Check out what the other two financial goals you need in your business are here.

 

WANT TO INCREASE YOUR BUSINESS’ INCOME IN 2025?   A 2025 Strategy Day will help you to do just that! I have a tried-and-tested planning process that I’ve used for years that ensures that in just one day I can help business owners to create a plan that priorities results and enjoyment for the whole year ahead.  All you have to do is fill in a questionnaire beforehand and then turn up on the day. I’ll then lead you through the whole process and write everything down – making it super easy for you! For more information and to book a 2025 Strategy Day click here.

 

Step 3: Review your offer suite and pricing

At this point, you’ve got a clear income goal and it is time to start mapping out what that would mean from a sales perspective. In the first instance, you’ll want to review your offer suite and pricing. Look at everything you sell in your business and make a decision about whether you are going to continue selling everything in the year ahead. Then look at your pricing to see if there are any changes you want to make to your pricing.

Now you’ve reviewed everything from your current offer suite it might be that you want to add something in for the new year. I go into further detail about how to revise your business’ offer suite for more impact, income and enjoyment here.

Once you’ve got an offer suite and pricing you are happy it is time to do some hypothetical financial forecast and work out what the sales volumes would need to be to hit your income goal. Depending on what you sell it might be that some of your offers are limited (for example if you offer 1-2-1 services you might have a limit to how many clients you have simultaneously) whereas some might have no limit (for example a digital course).

Either way you should get to the point where you have worked out across the year how many sales you’d need to make of each offer / service, at your given price, to hit your income goal.

At this point you need to consider whether it is physically possible for your business, in it’s current position, to be able to make that level of sales and to successfully deliver that number of sales. If is then great you can move onto the next step. If it isn’t then you’ve got choices to make. You can relook at your pricing, your offer suite, or your income goal. But don’t move on until on paper you’ve got to a point where you can logistically see how hitting your income goal is possible.

 

Step 4: Define your marketing and sales strategy

You’ve now got a crystal clear idea on your sales targets for the year and so it time to start planning how those sales are going to happen. For every single service or product you sell you’ll want to have a clear idea of what that buyer journey will look like and whether it is something you’ll be selling on evergreen (all the time) or only at certain times of the year. Having this timing information will be vital in helping you to create a marketing timeline.

WHEN YOU BOOK A 2025 STRATEGY DAY YOU’LL HAVE COMPLETE CONFIDENCE IN YOUR OFFER SUITE AND PRICING – AND THE STRATEGY TO SELL EVERYTHING. Review your services, finalising your new offer suite and ensuring the pricing is all correct are all part of the 2025 Strategy Day planning process.  But on top of that you’ll then have the marketing and sales strategy so you can sell everything in your revised offer suite so those income goals become a reality. For more information and to book a 2025 Strategy Day click here.

 

Step 5: Consider the operational impact

Last but not least it’s time to consider the operational impact and whether there needs to be changes from a resource perspective. You’ll want to look at a personnel perspective. Do you have enough people-power to deliver based on your new targets. And do you have the necessary skills? For example, it might be that physically you feel you have enough time to deliver the marketing strategy, but you might need to improve your marketing knowledge and skills to deliver with maximum impact. With people-power it might be that you’ve realised you need extra support. By looking at what is happening in the business across a whole year you’ll be able to make choices about whether to hire someone temporarily or permanently, and the amount of time you’ll need someone to be able to give you per week or month.

 

Then you’ll want to think about your technical infrastructure. Have you got the tech necessary to ensure everything runs smoothly? Think about tech for the different sides of your business it could be anything from tech to support admin, finance, marketing, sales or delivery.

 

Making changes to your resources is an investment, but as this is later in the annual planning process you’ll now be able to properly understand the potential return-on-investment. Those changes will help you to achieve your income goal, but in some cases those investments will enable you to far exceed your income goal.

 

 

That’s it. You now know how to use annual planning to increase your business’ income in 2025.

 

Increasing your business’ income in 2025 is possible in so many ways and by using annual planning hopefully you’ll be able to make informed decisions about the way you are going to approach making that additional income. Annual planning will help you to not only have a clear idea of what you are going to sell, for what price and the volume of sales required. But you’ll also make marketing and sales decisions so you know when you are selling what – and how.

 

I really hope this blog post has inspired you to plan for 2025 so that you no longer just have a vague goal of “increasing business’ income” and instead have a clear financial goal and a roadmap to achieve that.

 

If you are serious about using annual planning to increase your business’ income in 2025 then a 2025 Strategy Day would be perfect for you. 

A 2025 Strategy Day is a one-to-one annual planning experience. I’ll take you through my 5-step planning process and by the end of the day working together you’ll have your plan for 2025.

For all the information, and to instantly book, a 2025 Strategy Day click here.