It's that time again: time to start looking ahead and planning for next year. The budgeting process is a key step in planning for the year ahead. It helps your team understand your goals, align around a common vision for the future, and lay the groundwork for a successful year. Budgeting can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be.
This week, we're sharing our simple four-week plan for creating a budget. Here’s the schedule we follow:
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- Week 1: Get your thoughts and high-level goals on paper, and discuss them with your leadership team. There are no bad ideas in this meeting: talk about the ideal sales mix, gross profit, and net profit you'd like to see.
- Week 2: Share the results of Week 1 with division leaders, and ask them what resources they would need to reach those goals. What will they need as far as equipment, team members, materials, and other resources to be able to reach the goals you set.
- Week 3: Have open conversations with your team about the plans and make adjustments if anything now seems unrealistic. If your goal is to grow by 30% remember that might mean you need to hire 30% more team members and purchase 30% more trucks and equipment.
- Week 4: Finalize your budget and share it with your team. Make sure you include what's in it for them if you do hit your budgets: profit sharing, bonuses, pay raises, or promotions.
The biggest challenge landscape pros faced this year was finding labor, and that's likely going to be our biggest challenge next year too. While setting your budget, account for any plans or changes you'll make to address it next year: are you going to have to raise wages to find the team members you need? Will you need to raise prices to cover the cost increase? These are all conversations to have now so that you're ready for 2022.
Agree on a plan, work your plan, and you’ll be on your way to getting to where you want to go in 2022. Have a great week and, as always, if we can help you at The Grow Group, drop us a line at grow@growgroupinc.com.
Talk to you next week!
The Grow Group
P.S. We have plenty of opportunities for you to come to see us this fall! Join us at one of our Grunder Landscaping Co. Field Trips. The next events are September 22-23, October 27-28, November 16-17, and December 8-9. This event is a great deep dive into every functional area of a well-run landscaping company along with a small group of fellow success-minded landscape pros.