We are nearing the end of the first quarter of 2019. It’s time to prepare a list of objectives and strategies for the second quarter. This quarterly plan helps the companies to align with their annual plan at ease. These alignments and planning are required to achieve the primary objective of setting up the organization.
If you want to accomplish the goals at the earliest stage, go back and plan the quarter. Here are some of the tips to get started.
Table of Contents
1. Know the Basics
Basics form the foundation of any business goal. So, know your basics right. It helps you to set strong objectives for each quarter and make some modifications accordingly. You can quickly advance the growth of your company and its critical capabilities with wise decisions. Without knowing the basics, the companies waste their time and energy on the day-to-day business demands and forget their primary goal. So, to avoid this pitfall, you must have a clear understanding of basics which aids in building a powerful brand in the market.
2. Learn from the Past
Go through your wins and failures in the past. Your previous mistakes or business ideology carries a numerous amount of information to interpret. So, look back at your business and learn what it has accomplished in the last quarter. Although it is crucial to understand what worked in the previous quarter, and how did it truly achieve the intention, it isn’t highly impossible. You may have to invest some time in performing in-depth analysis, or you can hire a team to do it for you.
But, not to forget, focus both on the success as well as the failure of your past actions. Most of the time, it tempts us to leave beside the failures and concentrate only on the success part. But to move forward with the higher goals and desires, you must know your faults as well. Don’t be discouraged with the failure, instead consider it as a stepping stone towards attaining your quarterly goals. This approach helps you to avoid the mistakes committed before and to re-polish the previously executed strategies.
3. Pick Focus Areas
Focus areas play a crucial role in any business to achieve the desired result effectively. So, don’t over complicate your quarterly planning process with several things to focus. Pick three to five areas to concentrate for the coming quarter and leave remaining tasks for later. This approach simplifies your planning and makes your effort even more productive with only a few goals to attain.
You can organize a meeting with your team and discuss the top three or five focus areas to concentrate on the next 90 days.
For instance, potential focus areas for any business could be:
- Improving conversion rate
- Increasing lead flow
- Speeding up sales cycle
- Develop a new project
- Outsourcing or hiring a new candidate
Once you pick your focus area, you can invest your resources wisely to get things done by the end of the next quarter.
4. Prioritize your Business Goals
Now you know about your focus area for the next coming days. It may tempt you to proceed with the strategies of each task all at once. But don’t do it. Pause for a while and set the priority before proceeding. Go through the list and organize the works based on its urgency. If the task is enormous to handle, you can probably break them into a few more steps. But, always be realistic in this stage as you have got only 90 days to accomplish the goals and these 90 days goes fast!
You can then assign separate individuals to handle each focus area or each step in the subtasks. These individuals must responsibly complete the task by the definite date. With this structure, the owner of the function does not have to do entire work by himself. He needs to be responsible for the tasks and must make sure that it gets done in the best as well as quickest way possible.
5. Build Relationships
While trying to meet the new goals, most of the organizations forget to build relationships with the customers. Since customers are the most crucial asset for the success of any business, this ignorance will cost your business more than you expect. So, give importance for their interests along with working towards your quarterly goal. The easiest way to build the relationship is through social media channels. These channels help you to create two-way communication with the audience where they can share their thoughts about your brand without hesitation.
Besides, you can organize the events and invite your customers to partake in it. These events leave positive impressions most of the time in the minds of the customers. So, provide an immersive experience to your clients in such programs and build a strong base.
6. Look beyond Your Boundary
In some cases, the current resources or strategies may fail to produce the desired outcome at the end. So, looking outside the set boundaries is very much essential for the accomplishment of specific goals. As some problems require innovative approaches, new thinking, and an exceptional level of collaboration, you can take help from others to guide your way towards triumph. You can either seek guidance from individuals or collaborate with other team members, start-ups, society or competitors when you are running out of time or creativity. This approach helps to co-create a sustainable future for everyone.
7. Measure
To measure the outcome of any task, you need to assign the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for it. This KPI’s helps you to determine the performance and also to track the final path towards the success of your quarterly goal. You can create a chart that showcases the completion of the specific task in the visual format. Businesses can use this chart during weekly meetings to discuss the progress of the assigned work with the task owners.
These meetings help everyone in the team to understand their progress better and also gives warning signs in the earlier stage. Besides, you can use this approach to appreciate your team members when they achieve their goal. It motivates them to do better in the upcoming quarters.
Lastly,
In an increasingly overcrowded market, providing real value to the customers have become the ultimate goal for any brand. In the 21st century, your brand’s contribution to society will make a huge difference for the buyers. So, as a first step, you must make sure that your brand is not doing any harm to the people. Once you are sure about it, you can begin with creating value by following these quarterly approach to solve the problems.
