Using your budget to grow sales

Now that you have created your budget for 2012, how do you get the most use out of it?  One way to start is the look at the revenue part of the budget.  How did you create it?  What kind of growth are you planning for and how will you achieve it?  You can use your sales growth goals from the budget to jump start your marketing plan.  You cannot hope to achieve sales growth without a concrete plan. This goes back to our earlier post talking about strategic planning and re-determining who your target market is and how to reach them.  You may want to sit down with a marketing professional to review your marketing plan and make revisions as necessary.

This is also a good time to look at staffing.  Do you have the right number of employees with the right skills to implement your budget for 2012?  Having the right people is essential to achieving your business goals.  Next week, we will talk about looking at your product mix and examining the contribution margin for each product you sell.