The first item of business planning is the sales budget, every budget and almost every business plan you make for your shop follows from this sales budget. The more accurate your sales budget, the better you can manage the business.
Now its not very hard to make a sales budget. Simply look at the till roll (end of days) for last year about now, look at the last few months take a quick estimate on the economy and likely weather and take a punt. After a while, most people get pretty good with making an estimate daily for the coming quarter, months or week.
One of the big advantages of setting a budget is that it is a good motivator for you and your staff. A study of a shop showed a 5% increase in sales when the shop was given a daily budget. It was a driver to make more sales.
Two points here, a long period like a month is not much of a motivator at the start of the month and if the month starts poorly as it becomes apparent that the shop will not make budget, it becomes a de-motivator. This is why sales budgets are often done daily.
The other point is that if the budget is made to low, no-one gets motivated as its too easy to make budget. Conversely if the budget is too high, people lose interest as budget can rarely be made. As such I do recommend that you set a budget as realistic as possible. Your honestly will also come through to everyone else including yourself as everyone will know you are fair that this is what we should get today. If you want and you do want to act fair you can use the focus system to calculate your budget.
Once you do this, then you can assess every day in your business by department as good, bad and average.
Which in business gives you objectives with goals that are finite and measurable and brings me to a saying that I love.
