As a business owners you may have gotten yourself wrapped up in
the cares of the business and forget about sticking to your
plan. You may be the best at what you do but if you lose track
of any aspect of your business you can end up failing miserably.
The majority of new business owners get off to a good start
based on a viable business plan, but once in the heat of the
battle forget about the plan and learn the hard way that fake-it
'till you make-it is not working.
You can plan to make a set dollar amount of sales every month,
but if your plan is not specific on how to attain that goal, the
plan is doomed to fail. There is an old business saying that
states failing to plan is planning to fail and in any business
this is true.
For example, if the plan calls for $10,000 a month in sales and
on the 15th of the month sales are only at $3,000 chances are
you will miss your goal by $4,000 for the month. On the 15th it
is too late to make up the other $4,000 for the month. Tracking
the progress on a daily basis will make it easier to hit the
numbers over the 30-day period.
Knowing you have to do $340 in sales every day to hit the
$10,000 mark if at the end of day one you are at $300, you have
to take steps to add another $40 to the next day's business.
While projecting daily sales you also must project daily
expenses. For instance if you plan on expenses to be 30% of
sales and sales meet the $340 per day, you can spend $102 on
expenses. If sales for the day only hit $200, you must trim
expenses to $60 in order to hit your planned profit numbers.
In the beginning, it may be difficult to forecast profit and
loss on a continual basis, especially when environment or
supplier issues can alter the daily business. Just know as a
business owner there are no dressed rehearsals, the camera is
rolling and it's always on you.
