One-Year Financial Goal: You clearly identify an aggressive, realistic, measurable, one-year goal. Without this clarity it is almost impossible to grow. By creating a one-year goal you always have something to move towards and to measure your success.  Your one year goal is not just an ambiguous number that you can feel good about.  It forces you to understand your expenses, what your revenue streams are and how many sales you actually have to make to make money next year.

Target Market: When you are a small business, you can’t afford to talk to everyone. You have to talk to the people who will result in movement for your company. It is important to identify the right target markets for your business.  The businesses with the most defined target markets grow the fastest.

12 Month Action Plan: Once the goal and the target markets are identified, it is time to finalize the twelve-month action plan. Your SLAP™ is broken out into four quarters and each quarter has a communication focus. We have identified eight Communication Strategies that work for small businesses because they do not cost a lot of money to execute. These Communication Strategies are Branding & Identity, Events, Media, Referral Programs, Loyalty Programs, Incentive Based Sales, Connections and Online Marketing.  You implement one Communication Strategy per quarter and then break out your Quarterly Goals into Monthly Action Items.  These Monthly Action Items guide your time and to do list.

If you do all the right work each month and complete your Action Items you should hit your Quarterly Goals.  If you hit your Quarterly Goals then you will reach your 1 Year Goal.  If you do that for enough years- you will be making money doing what you love.

And when you get off track or miss your goals, you get a slap!