Plan the next quarter with ease
I can't believe we are already at the end of another quarter.
Time seems to be going very quickly, but if you would like a step-by-step plan to tackle the next quarter with ease and without overwhelm, stick with me, because we are going to go over a plan today that you can follow for every quarter if you'd like.
Have you made a quarterly plan before?
If you've never done quarterly planning before, it's the same as planning your entire business year or planning a month in your business, we're just going to plan three months at a glance.
This is not necessarily going to be a nitty gritty, what are you doing every single day of those three months kind of plan. It's an overview so that you can make sure you are taking the right actions each month, each week, so that you are actually moving towards the goals that you want to accomplish and you're not getting bogged down in the day-to-day operations of your business and losing sight of where you're trying to get to.
Monthly planning is important, but the quarterly planning is going to help you stay on track for your bigger picture goals.
Typically in my business, each quarter is going to have a slightly different focus. There might be some quarters focused more on sales and marketing, and there might be other quarters that are focused more on nurturing or maybe recovering from a launch period or something like that.
Or there might be quarters that are focused on growth. Maybe there's new projects or new offers that I am working on.
Today we're going to walk through a planning process to help you pick your focus for the next quarter and identify your most important business goals.
Assess the last quarter
During this planning process today, we are going to go over all the different areas of your business, but you're not necessarily giving every single one of them the same amount of focus each quarter.
We're going to brain dump for all of them and we're going to pick what the focus is - what the big picture goals are that you are heading towards this quarter.
I invite you to grab a notebook, the notes app on your phone, a word document, or a spreadsheet to record some notes.
If you've ever done monthly or quarterly or annual planning with me, you know what's coming next: the first thing that you need to do is look at the previous quarter.
Ask yourself:
What are the things that went well?
What are the things that could have gone better?
What are the successes that you are celebrating from this past quarter?
What are the things that are carrying over into this quarter because they're not finished yet or they're not where you want them to be yet?
Now, those things that you just wrote down that you are carrying over from the previous quarter - are they all important this quarter? Do they all need to carry over or are some of them things that can be put on the back burner for now?
Really look through that list and pick the things that are important to work on this quarter, the things that have to happen this quarter.
Maybe last quarter was a little busy and stressful, and you still have a ton of things from your to-do list that didn't get finished or didn't happen. It's tempting to just push all of those tasks into this quarter. But if you had trouble getting them done last quarter, is it really realistic to expect to get all of them done this quarter?
Maybe there are some organizational or strategic decisions that need to be made. Maybe you're taking on too much.
I invite you to think about that a little bit. It doesn't have to be right now, but it's something to consider through this planning process.
What's your focus?
You may not have done a formal plan for the previous quarter, but looking at what you did last quarter, do you know what your focus was? Do you know what the main goals were that you were trying to accomplish?
If you look at where you were focused last quarter, does that tell you where you want to focus this quarter?
If it does, great. You can use that as the focus for the rest of this planning session.
If you're not sure where you want to focus in this upcoming quarter, that's okay. Treat the next part of this planning like a brain dump and then we can narrow it down from there.
Let's break down our quarterly goals
In the next part of this planning session, we're going to divide our goals for the upcoming quarter into six different categories.
I'm going to go over each category and give you some areas to think about and some goals that you may want to set for that category. Feel free to add anything else that you like!
However, we're not going to focus on every single category equally next quarter.
As I said, if you don't know what your main focus is, brain dump everything you can think of in these categories and we'll clean it up. But if you know your focus, then be especially mindful of those areas and the goals that you are picking for those areas.
If you don't have big goals for the upcoming quarter in some of these categories, that's okay, because focusing on all six of these categories at once with big goals is going to be too much. You can keep your plan big, but be realistic.
Step 1: Sales
The first category is sales. What are you selling in the upcoming quarter?
If you have one main offer and you're going to continue to sell that one main offer in the next quarter, great. If you have multiple offers, maybe think about which one or ones you want to focus on this quarter.
What is your rough income goal for the quarter? Think about the monthly income goal that you would like to have this quarter and multiply it by three.
Depending on your type of offer, think about the number of new clients you would like to have, maybe if you are some sort of coach or service provider.
Or think about the number of sales you would like to have. Maybe your big offer this quarter is some sort of digital product or online course. Think about your sales goals for that.
Sales may not be your big focus this quarter, but I still invite you to put those numbers in your plan, because even if this is not a big launch or sales quarter for you, you should still have income goals and client or sales goals.
Step 2: Marketing
The next category is marketing. What is your plan to promote the offer(s) you decided on in the sales section?
You can think about the calendar of the next three months. Are you doing some sort of launch in there? Are there weeks in there that are going to be promotional, maybe in your social media or newsletter content or something like that? What is your plan to get your offer out there in front of people?
Again, think about this by the tangible numbers. What's the number of leads you would like coming in? Or maybe there's a certain number of discovery calls you would like to have. Maybe you were doing a webinar to promote this offer and you would like a certain number of attendees. Think about the ways that you can measure these goals.
Step 3: Grow your audience
Category number three is how are you going to grow your audience this quarter? This is separate from the traffic that you want looking at your offer. This is your audience in general - the way that you get exposure for your business in general.
This is typically things like social media content, your email list, your blog readers, your podcast audience - people that you send general content to.
How are you going to get more people in your community?
Maybe you want to create a new freebie this quarter. Maybe you want to be a guest on a certain number of podcasts. Maybe you want to lead a workshop either through your business or through another organization.
Think about your general audience growth and how you're going to increase it.
How many new people would you like on your email list? How many new social media followers would you like? How are you going to engage with them?
If you create a new freebie, how will you know it's successful? How many people would you like to sign up for it? What kind of conversion rate would you like from the people who go to the landing page versus people who sign up for it?
Again, think about the tangible numbers - you're going to get sick of me saying that!
Step 4: Nurturing
Then in category number four, how are you going to nurture these people in your audience?
Once you get them on your email list or following you on social media, what are you going to do about it? How are you going to make them want to stay and engage with you and know, like, and trust you?
You don't necessarily have to sit down right now and make a full social media plan for the quarter. That's something you may want to plan separately.
But think about what you want to do on social media at certain times this quarter. If there are promo weeks for your offer this quarter, think about the things that you can do to nurture people in between so they don't feel like they're being sold to all the time.
Think about the same thing with your email newsletter, blog, podcast, etc. Which weeks are going to be more promotional and which weeks are going to nurture people so that they feel like it's valuable to stay subscribed?
What is your goal for engagement? This might be your newsletter open rate or click rate, or the engagement rate on your social media profiles. How will you know that you are being successful at engaging with people and nurturing them?
Do you have a plan for engaging with your audience and other accounts on social media?
Do you have ways to measure your success in responding to comments and DMs online?
I know that all of this sounds like a lot, which is why we're not focusing all of our attention on all of these categories. If nurture content isn't a big focus this quarter, that's okay!
Step 5: Business growth
The next category is growth for the next quarter. How are you going to develop your business?
What are the growth-oriented projects that you want to work on? Are there new offers or new revenue streams that you want to work on or get going?
Maybe a new digital product or an online course or mini course or something like that.
Maybe you want to create a new coaching program or membership program. Maybe there's some sort of new strategy that you want to implement this quarter to grow your business.
Think about those growth opportunities and what things you want to make progress on this quarter versus things that you want to finish this quarter.
Step 6: Operations
The final category to think about when you are planning the next quarter is the operations of your business, the day-to-day business management.
Are there new programs or software that you want to implement this quarter? How are you going to get those set up? Get people trained on them? Get them working properly? How are you going to create standard operating procedures for how you want to use those things?
Do you need a new team member this quarter? How are you going to find them? How are you going to train them? How is it going to fit into your schedule for the quarter?
I promise you, if you are recruiting and training this quarter, that's going to take time and attention away from other things like marketing and nurturing, so really look at the quarter as a whole and think about how that's going to fit in.
Let's pick our focus for the quarter
Okay, so now that we have gone through all of these categories and written down everything that we would like to accomplish, let's go back to picking our focus for the quarter. As amazing as it would be to hit all of these goals across all of these categories, that would be so much work.
If you have a team to support you, you can do more. But if it's just you, then think about what is actually manageable for you to accomplish.
If you already know coming out of the previous quarter, which of these categories you want to focus on for the upcoming quarter, that's great.
If you haven't picked your focus yet, I want you to look back through what you just wrote down for these six categories. Now ask yourself: if I could only accomplish one of these goals over the next quarter, which would it be?
If you have to pick two, you can. I encourage you to pick one if possible, but a maximum of two if you really can't narrow it down.
Once you have picked that category and that goal that you would like to accomplish by the end of the quarter, everything from this point forward should be geared towards accomplishing that goal.
Think about where you are now and where you will be when that goal is accomplished, and then break down all of the steps that you need to do to get there and start slotting them into the next three months.
If your goal by the end of this quarter is to launch a new offer, right now maybe you need to finish creating that offer or you need to start working on a launch plan, maybe you need to start writing promotional emails or promotional social media posts to go out to your audience.
Maybe this offer is your first online course and you need to figure out which program or platform you are going to use to host it.
So think about the things that need to get done to get to that goal and plan out when they're going to happen over the quarter.
Break your goal down into steps
The nice thing about looking at the quarter versus one month is that you can spread these tasks out over three months instead of just four weeks. This gives you time to play with if you have other things that you also need to work on in there or if you have vacation time or other things like that.
Really look at the next three months and start planning things out, giving yourself deadlines for the different stages of this goal and make yourself a plan to get there. Break it down into small steps so that it's less overwhelming.
When you plan each week, think about what you are working on that week that is moving you towards the goal.
Your main goal or your main focus for the quarter does not have to happen in that third month. Based on your timeline, your availability, the calendar of your business, maybe it's something that's happening in month one or month two. Plan accordingly for that.
That's when you may have a second focus for the quarter. If there's a big thing happening in month one, that means that you can focus on a different goal in months two and three.
Figure out what's going to work best for you and your business so that you can move forward this quarter but do it without burning out.
I hope that this plan has helped make the next quarter clearer for you and hopefully more exciting and manageable, and you can see those goals on the horizon as something achievable.
If you have any questions about how to achieve the specific goals in your business this quarter, please leave a comment or feel free to reach out to me.
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