Depending on your personality, business planning is likely a favorite or least favorite aspect of your job. Some people love the challenge of evaluating an operation and charting its path to the future. Others aren’t always so captivated by the long game; they’d rather be out in the market today — enjoying the now.
Yet no matter where you fall in the spectrum of business planning fandom, one thing is for sure: After the events of the past year, projecting what to expect for your business in 2021 is a tall task.
It has been at least a decade since the dealer and aftermarket channels entered a new year fraught with this much uncertainty.
For those who battled the Great Recession and won, I’m sure there are aspects about business planning you learned then that you can fall back on this year. For those who weren’t yet in the market or had not yet ascended to positions of authority, setting your goals for the year ahead is going to be hard.
Here are a few things to consider before you finalize your business plan and notify your team of their expectations for the year ahead.
How did your business respond to 2020?
This is obvious, I know, but I’m not only suggesting you evaluate your 2020 results against your projections. How were you doing pre-COVID-19? How about after? Did your business fluctuate month over month? What about shutdowns? How many occurred in your area of operation and did they correspond to any business lulls?
