At this time of year everyone is talking about planning...

It's a great idea, but for some people it is totally overwhelming. Coach Dale Beaumont gave a great presentation recently where he suggested we take a calendar for 2012 and fill it in with everything we hope to achieve in the next year. That's a real challenge when you haven't even thought past Christmas yet.

Planning for the future means you have to have some things on your to do list that you really want to achieve. In your business, you could be thinking of developing a new product, renovating your business premises or generating more sales. Each one of these involves several small steps and the thing we see in most achievers is that they work through these steps until they reach the outcome they desire.

By planning a year ahead, you can be scheduling in major personal events such as holidays and weddings, then you can build your business around these and still maintain balance and direction in your life.

You can save money by making buying decisions that will serve you well into the future. For example, if you know you're going to be needing bulk printing or other services, you can set up agreements for the whole of 12 months. You will no longer find yourself shopping in a rush and making hasty decisions about what is available at the time.

Other things like staff training become so much easier if you have a plan for 12 months. Once you identify the strengths in each staff member they can be encouraged to take on the part of your business which will serve you best and they can be involved in long term planning to the point where their expertise identifies techniques and resources that will make your project much easier and cost effective.

Perhaps the best benefit of planning 12 months ahead is being able to work out your budget. If you sit down now and calculate what it costs you and your family in living expenses, this is the primary amount you have to earn. Now in order to make this money you have to work for yourself or someone else. As a business owner you need to know exactly what it costs to run your business each year. This gets added to the budget, as does the amount you will need for renovations, business development and other things like marketing. Finally, you need to decide what profit you would like to make.

This is the total amount you need to turnover in your business in the next 12 months.

It may be a bit scary, but now that you know, you can take this figure and work out what you have to do to earn this amount of money. Here's a simple chart developed for a client.

The technique helps to:

• set prices (is $20 going to make enough money for a CD?)
• schedule committments
• understand where gaps occur in program and sales (Do you need to make an all out effort to increase sales in any given month)
• work towards future improvements.
• give mini targets to achieve throughout the year.

With 2012 in full swing, it's sure to be a busy time but take a few minutes to get some ideas down on paper. There are lots of tools to help you and every bit of planning that you do will contribute to the wonderful success you deserve to experience in 2012.

Penny Paxman is coaching small business owners in regional Victoria. She is owner of Ticks Life Coaching and has developed an online program called ‘Fit for Business' at www.fitforbusiness.com.au. Penny can be contacted at 0417 570 801.