Strategic Planning Information

Planning For The Slow Season Of Your Business To Increase Sales

Every business experiences slower periods. For some, they sell more during the Christmas season while others move at a snail pace. Some sell more during the summer and others less. The key is being aware of your seasons and alternatives available to solve the challenge and change the results.

All businesses need down time, breathing room to re-evaluate where we're going, and where we've been. What's working and what's not? What changes need to occur and where we want to go in the future?

Have you planned your breathing room time into your calendar year?

As a coach and independent professional, I know by personal experience and through the feedback of my clients, that during the slow times, stress, fears, and challenges on how to pay the bills increases. Sometimes, stress increases without any money factors because we're not used to having additional time on our hands, so our brain manifests things to fill the void. So, what are the alternatives? Good question. Let's explore the possibilities...

You can use the "save for a rainy day" philosophy by moving a certain percentage from a regular account to a money market or savings account for those rainy time periods.

You can plan out, on a paper calendar your seasonal periods. Look at your Income Statement for the past few years and you will see a pattern appearing. If that history isn't available, ask others in your field area. As a coach, I'm in the personal development field. I would contact others in this field, like speakers, trainers, who have experience and history and interview them on the question.

After you review your historical financial information, keep in mind that future economic conditions will influence your seasonal plans. This requires a strategy on who and what you are going to use for economic indicator flags. This may require a financial planner, economist, or other professional on your support team. Reading the paper or watching the news is all well and good, however, it can also add to confusion. Too many cooks in the kitchen syndrome. Choose one or two cooks and ask the others to leave the kitchen.

Remember, there are different seasons all over the world. When its summer in the United States, there is a different season in Australia and Japan. If your marketing vicinity is global, you need to plan your seasons very carefully. Each requires different marketing strategies and procedures. When marketing in the U.S. reduces, marketing in other countries will most likely increase. Especially if you are in the bathing suit business.

If your business is strictly local, you can create additional products or services that will only be available during that season. This can maintain momentum. You can use the "limited availability" technique for these products.

You can use this time for vacation, organize, plan, create new products, and use your rainy day funds for support.

As well as, establish new joint ventures, expand personnel, test new product ideas, clean up backlogs in filing or emails, send out thank you gifts, upgrade your computer, or learn new software.

Keep in mind that leaving some of these to-dos might be detrimental to your revenue generation thinking. Allowing a build up of the items that support your success, as mentioned in the above two paragraphs, can create a desire to create your own self-fulfilling prophecy. You will intentionally create a slow period when a natural occurrence wouldn't regularly happen. An indicator can be if sales don't return after the slow cycle. Pay particular attention if it occurs.

Choose to do some planning today on your seasons for the money results you want tomorrow. Identify when and where your business and industry seasons are, explore all possible solutions, and work through a plan to fill the void. The results will almost be a given.

Catherine Franz is a Marketing & Writing Coach, niches, product development, Internet marketing, nonfiction writing and training. Additional Articles: http://www.abundancecenter.com blog: http://abundance.blogs.com

More Resources

Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting

More Strategic Planning Information:

Content Management: Wise Investment for Business Prosperity

The time when a website was just a simple set of HTML pages has gone by. It's true, just five or seven years ago simple websites developed with HTML and JavaScript were usual.

19 Questions to Supercharge Your Business Plan

Whether you are seeking capital for your company or are optimizing your business strategy, the most important element - particularly for outside investors - may be your written business plan. You can tune-up and supercharge your plan using this 19-step checklist.

In Business Planning, Competition is Good

When developing the competition section of your business plan, companies must define competition correctly, select the appropriate competitors to analyze, and explain its competitive advantages.To start, companies must align their definition of competition with investors.

Business Results - Four Critical Success Factors

Scenario OneDuring a recent presentation, a business owner was given the following challenge. If 10 of his 100 employees were asked to name the top 3 organizational goals for the current year as they perceived them to be, would he receive the same 3 goals from everyone or would he receive 5, 10 or even 25 different goals? The business owner shook his head and thoughtfully responded, "No, I am sure that I would receive more than 3 goals.

Why Six Sigma Will Work in Healthcare

If ever there were an industry where we want zero defects, it's healthcare. Patients, medical professionals, and healthcare administrators all want mistakes eliminated and quality and efficiency improved.

Take A Systems View To Ensure Your Business Stays Healthy

How are you feeling today? Good, not so good, great? Let me ask the same question in a different way: How is your gastro-intestinal system functioning today? What about your lymphatic system? How's the old circulatory system flowing along? Are all your bodily systems aligned, in sync, and cranking at peak performance?In order to get everything done perfectly and on time, your body must use many systems that effectively work side by side. Just as it is important to take a systems view when it comes to your body's health and well-being, it is equally important that you have a clear understanding of your business and its organizational systems.

Hunters and Gatherers - Are You Serving Both Their Needs?

The University of Exeter in the United Kingdom recently published research financed by Barclays Bank, which has implications for everyone who is serving the general population.This research shows that consumers shop establishments based on one of the two personal profiles.

Strategic Acquisition Strategies for Small Businesses

Growth through acquisition should not be considered an option reserved solely for large or Public Companies. Small and mid-size businesses that opt to grow by acquiring other companies, rather than growing one new customer at a time, can gain benefits in addition to increased sales and profits.

Microsoft Great Plains in Advertising & Publishing - implementation highlights

Microsoft Great Plains, former Great Plains Dynamics is excellent fit for service oriented business and in this small article we'll give you magazine publisher and advertiser implementation and reporting scenarios. The system we describe is not real, we are putting together industry specifics, based on our consulting practice.

6 Changes You Can Make to Increase Business Profits

I read once that something like 30 percent of all drinkable water gets wasted on the way to the consumer by leaky pipes. Likewise, your business may be letting potential revenue drip away, to be lost forever, all over the place.

Strategic Planning and Total Quality Management

No matter what product or service you provide you will have to face this issue of quality and systems. Whether it is distribution of services or streamlining of processes in manufacturing your product; you will need to address the issues of total quality management.

Business Plan Financial Projections: Stop Worrying About Being Right...

Business plan financial projections seem daunting because they are so uncertain. This very uncertainty, however, is what makes preparing them easy because you can't possibly be right.

Is Plan B Ready?

Business owners and entrepreneurs are, by nature, risk takers and adventurers. If we didn't have that "optimism gene" floating around, not much of any progress would ever get done.

During the election we heard about Ohio's Economy

Much of what we heard in the mass media about Ohio and the down and out economy was the fiction of spin-doctors of politics who wanted to oust the current sitting President. On further review and first hand observation and experience Cincinnati has people moving in and economic expansion.

What Every Service Provider Ought To Know About Writing A Business Plan

It's easy to lose sight of what needs to be communicated to prospective investors when writing the various sections of a business plan. Successful business owners/entrepreneurs use each section of their business plan to work up interest, to present arguments and, most important, to build trust and confidence.

How to Start A Business Plan

A business plan precisely defines your business, identifies your goals, and serves as your firm's resume. The basic components include a current and pro forma balance sheet, an income statement, and a cash flow analysis.

How to Grow Your Business by Clearing the Way to Growth

Is your business growing as fast and effectively as it could, or is it stuck at the same level it has been at for years? Research (Larry Greiner, 1972) has discovered 5 specific stages of business growth. Most business never grow beyond the second level.

Benefiting from Strategic Thinking

I recently took an organizational behavior class where my professor conducted a strategic thinking exercise in which groups of students were to be a part of a scholarship committee. The purpose of our committee was to use strategic thinking on allocating a scholarship budget to reward several incoming freshmen to our university.