How To Prioritize In Your 90-day Plan

Well, it is October and while this year has simultaneously been the longest year and the fastest year, a lot of attention is starting to turn towards what can we do to end this year strong. I've had a lot of conversations around 90-day plans. And so I really want to talk to you about how to decide what to put on your 90-day plan. Because I think a lot of people chase a big revenue goal. So when we say finish the year strong, we think that means adding more money to our PNL. And in reality, you may need to focus somewhere else first. Now what's important is when we think about 90-day planning, we're thinking about maintenance level and project level. So we start with sales because it is the lifeblood of your business without sales nothing else is happening. When we decided whether your sales number is a maintenance number or a project number, we need to reference back to how much do you need to make in sales in the next 90 days to support your lifestyle? Okay. We're not talking about Oh, but I would quite like to make X amount by the end of the year, how much do you need to make? That's where we're going to start. If you continue on doing, as you're doing right now, and you would hit that number, your sales goal is a maintenance goal. So you have a number that you're aiming for, but you do not have any projects you need to undertake in order to achieve that. If you are not hitting that number, your first focus in your 90-day plan is how to hit that number. That may mean you need to go back and think about your ideal client. It may mean you need to look at what offers you're making. It may mean you need to think about your pricing. Do you need to increase your prices? Do you need to do a different kind of promotion? Have you asked your clients for referrals? Have you thought about direct outreach as well as social media? Whichever piece of the puzzle you believe is going to get you to that sales number you need to plan for that in the 90 days. How long is it going to take, what is it going to look like? I'm going to go as far as to say sales is so important that if you need to focus on it, it would be the only thing I would put on your 90-day plan. I would devote the next 90 days to getting to that sales number. Now, if sales are maintenance, that's great. We're just going to keep doing what we're doing. Let's move on to what could be the next project. So the next piece of the puzzle is profit. If your sales number is sufficient to support your lifestyle, we know that that means the profit, the money you're taking home is sufficient as well. However, if you haven't done an expenses review in a while, this would be a great project to put on your 90-day plan for the end of the year. And an expenses review simply means actually going. Line by line, by line, through each item that you're paying for and asking yourself a couple of questions. Do I actually need, this would be the one I'd start with. I would wager that you probably have at least one piece of software that you are paying for, that you haven't used in a while. Then there's thinking about, is there a different provider for your needs that you could change to? Is there an annual discount that you could take the company up on? And finally, is it worth phoning them and saying, Hey, I've been a loyal customer for X amount of time and I'm thinking of changing. What can you offer me? Here's what else is on the market. This may feel like a really big project, but a couple of years ago at SumoCon Noah Kagan challenged us to do this in the room. And I personally saved about 1200 bucks in 20 minutes. Just finding software I didn't use swapping things, canceling things. So this doesn't have to be a lengthy project, but I would really suggest putting some time on your calendar, blocking it out as a mini project for your 90-day plan, because if you can save on the expenses and up the profit you would need even less effort on the sales front. So if sales is at a maintenance level and you've put some time in the plan to do an expenses review, we can move on to optimizing your business. So your sales is the lifeblood, your profit is the thing that keeps you in business, it's the sustainability of your business. Your team, and your system, the operations is how you optimize your business. So this is where you need to be thinking through all of your systems. Does something need attention? Has something not it's been documented? Has a system repeatedly been letting you down? Have they outsourced their help desk and service levels have just dropped off dramatically? On the team front, are your team, super stretched. Does somebody need a break? Do you need to reshuffle people's roles and responsibilities? Do you need to hire, do you need to fire? This is an area where you will already know what needs to happen. It has probably been sitting on your to-do list to either figure out what the solution is or to actually implement the solution for quite some time. When we talk about finishing your year strong, I want you to finish your year so stable at your current level, that when you want to uplevel next year, you'll business is able to support you. So a lot of times this is it's the piece of the puzzle that gets ignored and what happens as we start shooting for these revenue goals and all our focus is on a revenue goal and it stretches your systems. It stretches your team. Beyond what you've been set up for. And that's when things start to break that's when things fall apart, that's when all of your attention suddenly has to go back into the day to day. And then your revenue goal starts to look further and further away because everything's falling over in the back end. If you can honestly say that your sales level is maintenance, you can fit your quick expenses review in and your team and systems are a well-oiled machine, then you can start to think about what would I like to try in Q4? You know this is when you can then be like, Oh, maybe I'll do a YouTube channel or I'll start a podcast. Or I am going to try offering this group program that I haven't done before. I want to see what I can jiggle to add an extra 50 K to Q4 or a hundred K or whatever experiment you want to take on, but this should be the last piece of the puzzle should be the last thing that you are adding to your 90-day plan. Not the first. First, we want to make sure that you are stable, where you are before we try to stretch. This means that you will finish this year strong and confident going into next year so that when we talk about 2021 planning, you know what your business can and can't handle and what you will need to factor in to stretch it further if that's what you want to do.