It’s time to prepare your business for 2021. Some may say you should have done that already. They’re not wrong, yet given the realities of business and the crush of end of year work, you may not have made it a priority. If that is the case, you still have four weeks left until 2021, and this 4 part series will get you ready to put together your plan of attack. Here is the breakdown of each weekly theme.

• December 7^th– Realistically Assess Your Business
• December 14th – Bend the Curve and Achieve Your 2021 Goals Faster
• December 21^st – Create Your 2021 Goals and Strategies
• December 28^th – Set Your 2021 Priorities

In the last post, we discussed the first stage in planning for 2021, getting to a level set by realistically assessing your business. We’ve evaluated ourselves on multiple levels and brainstormed what we could do to improve. But what do we do with that information? The first step is an exercise called “Bend the Curve.” It’s the single most important exercise you can perform to make significant progress against your business goals.

How do we Bend the Curve?

First, let’s take a look at that brainstorming you did after the last post. Review that list and rank order it from most impactful to least impactful for your business. As you rank order, consider their impact on your revenue, expense, profit margin, product development, and efficiency.

Second, take your top 3 ideas and list them in columns. Under each, create a list of how you can achieve them. The list can contain revenue growth items through increasing sales calls, buying more Facebook ads, or increasing podcast appearances. Do this for each column. It would be best if you worked to have 3-5 ideas in each column, giving you up to 15 concepts to consider.

What Strategies Do You Need to Consider?

The ideas in the columns inform the strategies to grow your business. They answer the question, “How will we run the business.” Now consider what it will take to execute each of those strategies. Do you have the capacity to do them today? What pieces are there, and what elements are missing? What is the level of effort for each? How much increased revenue or reduced expense will they generate? What will it cost to build those capabilities?

With that information in hand, we have a good handle on the ROI of each of these strategies. We can use that information to rank order a series of Action Plans or projects that we need to implement to grow our business and bend our revenue curve up faster than otherwise.

Action Plans and Timing

As we will discuss in the fourth post in this series, we need to spread those action plans over the year. We want to aim for 5 to 7 major business-building projects for our company and no more than nine over the year.

More importantly, we want to look at these action plans in terms of business quarters. I advise my clients to have no more than three big projects on their plate each quarter. Most companies don’t have the resources to do more than that. Or at least do more than that without exhausting their team and their resources.

Bend the Curve is a powerful exercise. It allows you to identify the important projects that will make a difference for your business in 2021. Involve your team in these discussions. We don’t always have every great idea ourselves as the leader or owner of the company. A group effort will ensure you don’t miss any nuances or opportunities.

Are you ready to Bend the Curve for your business? Set up a consultation call to discuss how this and other tools we provide can help you clarify your goals, align your team, and grow your business faster.