With all the time and effort you dedicate to helping your clients plan for the future, it’s also beneficial to do the same for yourself.

But have you done so? Most likely, you simply haven’t had the time to pursue this, even though it is critical to your personal and business success.

To help you execute your business plan, we have developed The Personal Coach Planner. This tool is divided into three sections: a review of the previous year, goal-setting and monitoring.

1. Review of the previous year

The planning process begins with thinking about what happened in your business and personal life over the last year. What are some lessons that can help you in the coming year? We tend to learn more from the things that did not go well. Therefore, by taking a disciplined approach to your review process, you will recognize what can make you and your business more successful and profitable.

When reviewing, reflect on the following:

Business review

  • Profit and loss: How does it compare to the previous year?
  • Revenue sources: Identify how much of the business revenue came from renewals and trailers, cross-selling current clients and new clients. Also, review the source of revenue product lines i.e., money business/insurance business/employee benefits. And take a close look at new client acquisitions and how you secured them.

    Personal review

  • Personal profit and loss: How does your personal situation compare to the previous year?
  • Personal balance sheets: Compare your net-worth statement to the previous year.
  • Review your insurance, investment, and financial independence plan.

    2. Goal-setting

    Goal-setting allows you and your team to become more focused, which creates greater confidence and leads to greater freedom — time freedom, money freedom and worry freedom. Along with setting goals, be sure to identify strategies and tactics that will help you reach your goals.

    Set realistically attainable goals. Big businesses, for instance, are built upon steady growth of 12% to 15% per year. Working with our advisors, we have seen that growth is a cinch by the inch, but very hard by the yard. It’s easy to set a new high watermark when we know what the high watermark has been in the past. The same goes for the tactics and strategies.

    When you look at your revenue goals on a go-forward basis, there are only three ways of bringing in revenue: renewals and trailers, cross-selling to existing clients and new client acquisition. And you’ll need to review two tactics to set future revenue goals: a contact management system and a new client acquisition program.

    With your contact management system, you’ll need to:

  • Review the criteria for establishing various segments.
  • Review your relationship management strategies for each segment.
  • Review your process. Our experience has shown that the contact management system works best when a staff member, not the advisor, is the champion.
  • Determine if you have the right technology to manage the system.

    With your new client acquisition program, you’ll need to concentrate on the five methods to acquire new clients. They are listed here in descending order of effectiveness:

  • Referrals from satisfied clients
  • Centres of influence
  • Networking within the community
  • Educational workshops
  • Advertising

    Budgeting is another part of goal-setting. Issues to be considered include staff requirements/compensation needs; technology; space; marketing, branding, advertising; transportation; and travel, entertainment and client appreciation.

    Finally, the last phase should be in the development area. That means figuring out your and your staff’s development plans; procuring of designations; what conferences you’ll attend and whether you need updates in certain areas of knowledge.

    From all of this, you’ll also be able to set personal goals which will determine what income will be available for you and your family. This includes doing an expense budget for your family, identifying savings, updating your insurance and independence plan and, of course, planning for your time off.

    3. Monitoring

    Create checkpoints for yourself throughout the year, to measure progress and achievement. Our experience has taught us that measurement always improves performance. For optimal monitoring, we recommend the following:

  • Compare your revenue against objectives.
  • Track new clients, paying particular attention to where the names are coming from, what segments they fit into, and basically anything unique that happened in the process, and the actual revenue result.
  • Have a P&L completed on your business at the end of every month and compare this year’s P&L with last year’s.

    Ultimately, by evaluating your current practice and determining concrete goals, The Personal Coach Planner can help you plan for success.

    Kim Poulin is a coach based in Montreal and Art Schooley is a coach based in Kitchener-Waterloo.

    (12/15/08)