The Activities That Pay

The way I attempt to analyze every little facet and activity of my business is either the thing that makes me more effective than my competition or the thing that makes me a bit crazy, or perhaps a bit of both.  Either way, one thing I've worked on the most is which activities turn into increased sales or profits (or both), and give those more attention than others.

That said, I've needed to be smart about finding my points of diminishing returns so I don't become wasteful with my time, or put off things that need to be done that maybe don't pay out as well as other activities.  So I spent a lot of time on my business planning for 2013-2014, an activity that probably doesn't translate to bigger sales and profits today, but should for the rest of the year. 

It's easy to blow off planning - "we're too busy running the day to day."  When I think about all the planning I did in my corporate life that was rendered obsolete a few weeks later when the leaders decided to change course, it would be easy to pretend business planning can wait until tomorrow. 

But now I have a clear vision about where I want my business to be in 12 months.  How I'm going to increase my sales and gross margin on existing product lines, what new product lines I want to dive into, what other services I want to provide.  Ready to execute and measure this plan and have a better year than I could have imagined.  Five months ago I ordered half pallets at a time, this month whole pallets, Christmas 2013...truckloads?  I will if my plan is correct and we're ready to take it to that level!

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