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It’s Only Common Sense: Planning for a Great 2023

Here we are again, getting ready to plan for a new year. If your company has been doing great this year, this is an opportunity to review what worked and why you have been succeeding in 2022. You can build on that by adding a few more tactics and adjusting that strategy so next year is as good as this one.

If things didn’t go so great for you, it’s a great opportunity to start over, to turn that proverbial page and have a fresh start. Learn what worked and throw out what didn’t work—after learning from it, of course. Remember there is no such thing as failure if you make it a learning experience. Figure out the things that worked and develop a new strategy with a new direction and tactics. As you work on implementing those things, you should have a more successful 2023.

This is also a great time as a company leader to energize the troops and get them excited about a new year and all the great opportunities it can bring. But no matter what shape your company is in today, you must review what happened this year and plan for what you will do next year. Make sure you have some good, clear, easy-to-use measurement tools to see how you’re doing along the way.

To help make this all-important endeavor as easy as possible, here are 10 steps you can take right now to start planning for a great 2023.

1. Review where you have been. As you look back on 2022,  ask yourself about what worked, what did not, and what needs to be improved.
2. Get your operations leaders in management, engineering, and quality to report on their performance for the past year.
3. Your operations leader must report on delivery performance. What were your delivery stats? What is your on-time delivery status? What is your current head count and how many more will you need to hire to match the forecast numbers your sales manager will predict?
4. Have your quality folks report on your quality rating. How many rejects did you have and why? How many customer returns did you have and why? What qualifications are up to date, and which ones will need to be updated? Which new qualifications will you need to earn in 2023 to match the sales department’s slate of target accounts?
5. The engineering department needs to report on its technology. They must review your current technology capabilities and develop a three-year technology roadmap to let the rest of the company, especially the sales team, know what technology you can offer in the future.
6. The sales department, particularly the sales manager, has the most to do during this time of planning. Sales managers must start working with their salespeople to review all the target accounts from last year. Review what worked and what did not. Which accounts grew, lessened, or were lost? The team must develop this year’s list of target accounts and make account plans for the larger ones. This account plan must include what you did with them last year, their technology, and what it will take to grow them next year. The sales staff also must develop their forecasts for this year and give these to the sales manager who will create the overall month-by-month company forecast. This will be shared with the other departments because their plans for 2023 are completely dependent on what the sales team predicts.
7. The entire company must work on the company strategic direction for 2023, as team leaders, and based on all the accumulated data, decide the direction of the company including what services you will offer. What markets will you focus on and how will you do that?
8. Once the strategic direction of the company has been developed and agreed upon by the entire management team, it must be communicated to the entire company. It is important that every single person at every level knows what the company strategy is for 2023.
9. Your company must develop its marketing plan. They must decide how to get the word out about the company. How will they reach their target audience? How will they become well-known? How will people know who they are, what they do, and how they can be reached? This means developing a good marketing plan—including one that uses both analog and digital marketing, from print ads to search engine optimization, from Linkedin to Constant Contact to a good transactional website.
10. The last step is setting up a system to measure your activity and your results. I recommend a daily dashboard that covers all pertinent activity. Try a monthly meeting to review how things are going and to measure actual results to the plan.

If you do all these things with serious intentions, you will have a successful 2023.

It’s only common sense.

Dan Beaulieu is president of D.B. Management Group.