Have you taken a look at your books lately?

What worked in 2018? What could you do better in 2019?

I’m wrapping up my projects for 2018, and I’ve found a few things:

• I work best when I have 6-8 projects going at a time.
• That means 5 active clients each month.
• I need to make sure and collect payment when a project begins.
• My marketing needs to be more targeted and specific.

Here are the three ways to start 2019 off right:

1. Set sales goals
2. Set marketing budget
3. Decide how to reach customers
   1. Past customers v. new customers
   2. More customers v. better customers

Set your sales goals using this past year as a guide. If you’re planning on growing the business, use 2018 as your minimum goal. Your stretch goals will really be a stretch; either double your 2018 actual number, or add 50% or 20% depending on where you’re starting. Set a target goal somewhere in the middle - something reasonable that you could accomplish but it would take a little bit of careful planning. You’ll need to decide what is reasonable.

Set your marketing budget (I recommend calculating 10% if you’ve never set a budget this way before.)

If you are bringing in $300,000 in sales in a year, your 10% marketing budget would be $30,000.

• $100,000 is $10,000
• $25,000 is $2,500
• $10,000 is $1,000

The U.S. Small Business Administration recommends spending 7 to 8 percent of your gross revenue for marketing and advertising if you’re doing less than $5M per year in sales, and your net profit margin is between 10 and 12 percent.

New companies need to spend more of their budget on Getting Noticed - up to 20% or more of their first year in sales. Established companies spend more of their marketing budget on Being Remembered.

Larger businesses such as Walmart spend $1M on advertising, but that’s only 1 percent of their annual sales revenue.

Once you have your sales goals and marketing budget set, I can help you with number 3 - deciding how to reach customers.

Here is how that works for me.

1. My sales goal for 2019 is $38,000 (minimum $25,000, target $38,000, stretch $50,000)
2. My marketing budget is $4,400 (halfway between my target and stretch goal)
3. Decide how to reach clients:
   1. Focus on reaching past clients for more in-depth work
   2. Explore how I can help my current client base in a way that builds their business for them in 2019

I almost decided to delete what I wrote above and use generic numbers that are much higher. Inside I’m squirming - What if my clients don’t want to do business with me because they don’t like my sales goals? What if they think I’m too small? What if they think I’m charging to much?

I believe that people do business with others they trust. This is my offer of trust - being honest and using my real numbers.

Join me in 2019 as I share how the business end of my business is operating.

I help you Get Noticed and Be Remembered.