My year-end review process for my business

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I would share the year-end review that I conduct in my business to close out one year and move forward in the next.

By sharing my process, I hope this supports you to hone in on what’s important in your business. 

My mission is to help Leaders and Business Owners create sustainable businesses. In order to create a sustainable business, knowing the metrics that convey the health in your business is so important. This way you spot problem areas that need to be addressed and successes that you can leverage or lean into.

If you chose to grow your business, you know whether or not you have a healthy foundation in which to do so.

I like to keep it simple.

Here’s where I focus:

Reflect

• What were my goals for this past year?

• Which did I achieve? What impact did they have on my business or me?

• Which did I not achieve and why?

  • What was the impact of not achieving them on my business or me? Are they worth setting as a goal next year? What barriers would I have to remove in order to achieve them? 

The Numbers & Impact

• Prospects – year over year growth (use a metric that is specific to your business that represents growth in leads/prospects)

• Sales - # of consultations – year over year growth (use a number here that is specific to your business that represents growth in qualified prospects interested in your product/service; ie. sales conversations/proposals/quotes). How many sales events did you have and did you see growth?

• Sales conversion rate (sales conversations/proposals/quotes that convert to clients is your close rate / sales conversion) - is this decreasing, increasing or staying the same?

• Profit/Loss – growth rate year over year

• Owner income (and Team member income) – where do I see growth? Where would I like to see growth?

Marketing

What was successful and what wasn’t (both online and offline activities): What marketing events are most effective at generating leads?   (look at the numbers here….don’t just go by your gut)

What marketing events should I do more of?

What just isn’t working and should be eliminated or adjusted?

What marketing haven’t I tried that I would like to add for next year?

Next year

• Where do I want to be at the end of the year?

• What does my team have to look like (how many team members and what skills do they need) to acheive this goal?

• What do I want to continue doing?

• What do I want to stop doing?

• What do I want to start doing? 

Happy reviewing – this is one of my favourite things to do ever! I love knowing what’s going on in my business and looking at the numbers that matter. I’ll often conduct mini-reviews each quarter as well so I have a pulse on things as the year progresses. It’s also a great idea to look at your marketing and sales numbers more often to see what’s working, and often enough to address anything that is not.

I would love to know about your year-end process. What do you do? What other things to you look at in your business?

NOW is YOUR time.

Ariana