September Is The Best Time To Get A Head-Start On 4Q Must-Do’s

Written by Mike Shapiro | | September 4, 2018

It usually takes a little time to get cranked up to full speed after the late summer doldrums. But you also know that just up ahead, when October rolls around, you’ll be knee-deep working on two critical questions:

  • What are our year-end numbers going to look like?
  • What are we going to do next year?

For year-end. Pretty soon you’re going to have to start preparing your real-number reports for this year. How did we do? What’s our total revenue? How much will we end up spending, and on what? What’s our profitability, our earnings? How do these numbers compare with our earlier projections? Which projects will be completed? Do we have what we need for performance reviews?

For next year. Once the October planning cycle starts, you’ve got to start talking real numbers for next year too: Amounts and sources of revenue? Staffing head counts? Line items of expense? Projects that get carried over from this year. New initiatives for next year.

But right now it’s the beginning of September. That means you don’t really have to develop realistic scenarios with real numbers and put them into spreadsheets — just yet.

Sure, you’re busy doing your regular work right now. But why not take advantage of these few precious weeks in September to do some blue-sky what ifs?

For year end: What if we…

  • Closed one more (or x more) pieces of business already in the works this year?
  • Stopped working on a pending project for a product or service that doesn’t look as promising now as it did when we started it?
  • Cut or reduced this or that line item of expense?
  • Reallocated our resources to focus more heavily on those clients that give us 80% of our revenue?

For next year: What if we…

  • Landed one more account worth $Y of revenue?
  • Augmented (or reduced) our sales force?
  • Closed down (or expanded) one existing product or aspect of our business?
  • Introduced a new product or service?
  • Outsourced a type of service we currently provide in-house?

You already know from past experience that the Fourth Quarter is jammed with a deadline-driven blizzard of work for reports on what you did this year and what you’re going to do next year. Why wait till you’re caught up in all that to try make time for some clear-headed thinking about the direction you want to take your company?

September is a great time to come up with some real difference-makers for year-end and next year ahead of the heads-down 4Q crunch.