7 Tips For Annual Business Planning for Professional Services
Annual business planning is an essential task for any successful professional services firm. It helps to ensure that the company has a clear roadmap for achieving its goals and objectives and provides visibility into key performance indicators. Through annual business planning, companies can identify opportunities to optimize processes and resources to maximize profitability.
Additionally, yearly business planning helps keep teams on track by outlining specific tasks and milestones necessary for success. Organizations that have an annual business plan and maintain focus on their core mission and values can more easily adapt to changing market conditions.
In this article, we'll share seven tips to ensure that your annual business plan is as effective as possible.
Tip 1: Set clear goals
“Before anything else, preparation is the key to success” - Alexander Graham Bell.
This may seem obvious, but it has to be said: setting clear goals and then writing detailed plans to achieve them is the easy part. The tricky part is actually achieving the goals and sticking to the plan.
Once you’ve set your goals, set micro-targets and check on them frequently to make sure you're on track. You probably have dashboards set up with metrics, so as part of your weekly leadership meetings, check in with your key managers and get into the details.
Good people management can be the linchpin to achieving your targets. How are your people doing? Is one of your top salespeople going through a divorce? What about the project manager who has critical surgery in a few weeks' time? Is their productivity being affected by the upcoming life event?
You’ll know whether the targets you set are realistic or could be considered 'stretch goals', so by checking in frequently, you’re giving yourself the opportunity to address issues that aren't working well and make adjustments that suit your team and goals.
By asking early and often, you will give yourself the appropriate lead time and preparation for when the board inevitably asks the question, 'Why did this happen?' You won't have to scramble or jump to conclusions about what exactly happened."
Tip 2: Identify areas for improvement
Annual planning should draw from the strengths and successes that you’ve had in the past. There are infinite ways that a business can improve, so it’s best to focus your energy on areas of improvement that will contribute to your targets. Here are some sources that will help you identify the areas for improvement:
Target metrics
Are you meeting your sales targets? Are your projects being delivered on time? Are they meeting or exceeding their budgets? Are there specific members of the team delivering early, while others are consistently a day or two late? Your target metrics from the previous year are the first place to look for areas of improvement.
Data
Data can make any areas for improvement glaringly obvious. Use your dashboard to its best effect and employ a data analyst if you’re unsure or think they can add long-term value. Sometimes having the right dashboard can be like clearing a muddy windscreen and seeing the road for the first time.
The sales team
When you need a litmus test for what is working and what is not working, your sales team will have the information that you need. They’re in the trenches all day, every day, so it comes with the territory.
Your customer success team
Picking up on customer annoyances and tickets can help you understand whether there are any product or process issues that could be worked on. You could even go as far as getting performance feedback from key clients so that you have an objective view of how you are tracking.
People working on the projects
Listening to the people building the things you produce for your clients can help, as they can give a unique perspective of what should or should not be happening.
Through the exercise of updating your yearly business plan, businesses can better pinpoint weaknesses or opportunities they may have missed before and address them accordingly.
Tip 3: Implement customer success strategies
Implementing customer success strategies is essential to any annual business plan in professional services. It helps ensure that your customer's needs and desires are met, leading to increased customer satisfaction and retention. Businesses can use a few key strategies to meet these goals.
Consultancy firms can establish themselves as reliable and trusted partners for their clients while staying ahead of competitors by giving priority to customer satisfaction. Achieving this requires your firm to take the time to address customer issues and concerns, as well as making plans to improve services in the future.
To achieve this, you can use customer feedback to identify areas for improvement, regularly check in with clients to ensure their needs are being met, and measure and track customer sentiment towards your firm. By continuously striving to enhance services and prioritising customer satisfaction, consultancy firms can foster long-term, trusting relationships with their clients and gain a competitive edge.
Tip 4: Develop a crisis management plan
In the face of unpredictable events, such as a recession or an economic downturn, having a well-constructed crisis management plan can help businesses prepare for (and manage) any challenging event that may arise.
The key components of an effective crisis management plan include risk assessment, communication strategies, and detailed plans for responding to a crisis. In an economic recession, businesses can use their plan to assess which areas are most vulnerable and create contingency plans that will help mitigate any potential losses. By taking the time to thoroughly prepare for these events, businesses can best position themselves for success.
Tip 5: Involve your team
The success of your firm depends on the collective efforts of your employees, and their engagement and alignment with the company's goals are crucial to achieving them. By involving your team in the planning process, you can ensure that everyone is on the same page and understands their role in achieving the company's objectives. This fosters a sense of ownership and accountability among your employees, encouraging them to take ownership of their work and strive towards achieving the company's goals.
To involve your team in the planning process, you can organise brainstorming sessions or workshops where employees can provide input and feedback on business goals and strategies. Encourage them to share their ideas and suggestions for improving the firm's performance and operations.
Tip 6: Refresh your marketing strategy
There are a lot of things in service delivery that will never change. Quality product and relationships will always generate more business. Happy project teams are productive project teams. Leadership team alignment creates organisational success, and marketing trends change.
Likewise, there are a few things in marketing that will always remain true:
A strong brand will lead to long term success.
Potential leads want to be associated with a winner.
A single minded proposition wins every time.
But everything else changes. For example, marketing channels. Did you know that TikTok will soon surpass Facebook in total user count? You’ll probably also remember the days with websites made purely of html, before the days of CSS and javascript. If you don’t take a look at amazon.com on the Way Back Machine to see for yourself.
Keep investing in the tried and true aspects of marketing and be ready to pivot as new channels and trends come and go. Marketing is an investment and we highly recommend that you review your collateral, brand, and channels every year alongside the annual business plan.
Tip 7: Invest in growth and automation
Automation can help businesses save time, increase efficiency and accuracy, making it easier to manage projects and complete tasks quickly. Manual processes are more prone to errors than automated processes, as they lack the accuracy and precision that automation can offer. Human errors may be caused by a number of factors, including poor communication between team members, a lack of understanding of the task at hand, or simply fatigue and distraction.
By investing in automation tools and implementing processes that can automate mundane tasks, businesses can reduce costs while increasing their speed to market, which will help them scale up faster. Additionally, automation allows teams to focus on the areas of the business that need their attention most, such as customer service and relationship building. This helps companies grow their customer base, which in turn leads to increased revenue.
Conclusion
Creating an annual business plan is essential to scale your professional service firm. As you work towards creating your annual business plan, it's essential to have the right tools and resources at your disposal. That's where Projectworks can help.
Projectworks is a comprehensive project management software designed specifically for professional service firms. It provides all the features you need to manage your projects, track progress, and collaborate effectively with your team and clients.
In addition, Projectworks provides you with real-time data on project performance, helping you make informed decisions and adjust your strategy as needed.