Budgeting season is approaching, and for many companies, it is already under way. Whether you like budgets or not, you have no doubt heard the motto " All Planning is Good". This is especially true as you look ahead and make plans for 2024.
Whether you’re planning to grow by 20% or just maintain your 2023 revenue, I want to help make sure you’re thinking through what that plan looks like so I thought I would share with you how we did this at Grunder Landscaping Co. for 2023 as an example.
We were coming off of two years of rapid growth, the most growth we’ve seen in 15 years. As we entered 2023, and we didn’t have plans to slow down. Here is what we thought through to make sure our plans were realistic:
Top Line Revenue
Top line revenue is a good place to start. We did nearly $10M in revenue in 2022 and set our top line revenue goal for 2023 at $12M. You can "gut-check" this plan's feasibility by then thinking about people, trucks/equipment, and your office space and yard.
Team Members Required
To achieve our growth, we would ideally need to hire an additional 25 team members, bringing our total headcount up to 90. This included the sales team members we would need to sell the work, group leaders we would need to manage crews, and labor we would need to execute the jobs sold and backfill any positions left empty by internal promotions.
We created a plan and started working on filling open roles ahead of when we actually needed them to make sure we were prepared and to give them time to be onboarded, trained, and coached to be successful. We felt like the growth in team members was achievable and knew that we had team members wanting to work overtime if we ever fell short on production labor.
Trucks and Equipment Required
To add an additional $2M in revenue, we would need to add new crews, which means new trucks and equipment too. While some of this revenue could be performed by existing crews and trucks through time gained in efficiencies, we knew we would still need addition items, so we made a list of the additional purchases we'd need to reach our goal.
We placed orders as soon as we knew what we would need to avoid any supply issues, and we were more flexible on our requirements than we would’ve been in the past. For example, we’ve bought equipment earlier than we really needed to when we found it available, repaired and held on to trucks longer than we would've in the past, driven farther distances to pick things up, and had a few trucks and cars wrapped and painted because we couldn’t find them in the color we wanted. This flexibility was all a choice centered around us hitting our goals, but it was a proactive choice not a reactive choice.
With lead times on equipment and hiring and coaching new team members, planning now and knowing what you’ll need early can help set you and your team up for success. Don't over complicate it, just make a list and assign when the deadline is and who is responsible for procurement.
Physical Space Required
If you haven’t been to see us at Grunder Landscaping Co. in a couple of years, you’ll see a lot has changed when you come back.
In 2023, our biggest facility need was office space. We cleaned out our storage area in the shop to build additional offices so that our sales, procurement, operations, and administration teams could have enough space.
Each of these is a piece of the puzzle to your company's success in 2024. Start with your top line revenue, and back into your people, trucks and equipment, and physical space needs. As you set your budgets and make plans for next year, I hope this helps you create an actionable plan for you and your team.
Vice President
The Grow Group