It is not rocket science I know but having a goal for your annual turnover, and splitting it down into months means that you have 12 chances to aim for a target which will improve your sales figure this year.

Have a look mid month and see if you need to make a huge push to get the work done this month, rather than letting the sales and the work spill into next month.  Having this monthly target really focuses your mind each month which will keep you heading in the right direction.

Another benefit to logging your actual sales each month is that you can spot cycles in the data - for instance is October always your best month? Is January always your worst one? Knowing these trends can keep you planning ahead as you will know when to encourage the staff to take their holidays etc.

Having a budget for marketing can also be a helpful tool.  It is tempting in these difficult economic times to try and cut every budget but some simply have to be invested in!  If you set a target of 5% of the income for the business being reinvested into marketing, you should continue to attract customers next year without the spending taking a dip or growing out of control.

Settign the targets is the first step and then taking time to monitor whether your results are on track is just as important.  Sitting down to set goals like they are new year's resolutions and then forgetting about them will not bring the results you were hoping for.

Keepp looking at the reports each month, keep logging the sales in comparison to the figure you were hoping for.  By the end of 6 months you will feel like you have more of a handle on the business and its progress.

The software packages we all use for bookkeeping have all this information in, but if you need help getting the reports out get in touch with BW Bookkeeping.