How to write a growth plan that fits on one page

Step 1: Gather twelve months of figures

You need revenue, direct costs and labour hours for each line of work, and estimates are acceptable. "Lines of work" means the distinct things you sell. A plumber might list emergency calls, planned replacements, renovation rough-ins and maintenance plans. A café might list counter sales, catering and wholesale baking.

For each line, collect:

• revenue for the past 12 months
• direct costs: materials, subcontractors, direct wages or food cost
• labour hours spent on it, including travel
• number of jobs, orders or customers

If your bookkeeping doesn't split these out, pull a sample of ten recent jobs per line and scale them up. Mark estimated figures with an asterisk so you know where to tighten them later.

Step 2: Rank lines by margin per labour hour

Revenue tells you what is big; margin per labour hour tells you what is worth growing. Calculate gross margin (revenue minus direct costs) for each line, then divide by the labour hours.

Here is a worked example for a fictional Victoria plumbing firm with five technicians:

Renovation rough-ins are the largest line by revenue and the weakest per hour. Water-heater replacements are mid-sized and the strongest. That doesn't mean dropping renovations, which may bring steady volume and builder relationships. It does mean the plan should not chase more of them at the current price.

Adjust for travel

In Greater Victoria, travel time can change the ranking. A line that sends technicians from a Saanich yard to Sooke or Salt Spring Island carries hours that never appear on an invoice. If you can, split hours into on-site and travel, and include both in the denominator.

Step 3: Choose three targets

Three targets is the maximum most owner-run teams can pursue at once. Each target needs a number, a deadline and one person responsible.

Good targets for the plumbing firm might be:

1. Grow water-heater replacements from $260,000 to $340,000 by next September. Owner: service manager.
2. Raise renovation rough-in prices by 10% on all new builder quotes from January. Owner: the owner.
3. Grow maintenance plans from roughly 150 to 250 customers by year-end. Owner: office lead.

Each of these is measurable from records the business already keeps. "Improve customer service" and "grow brand awareness" are not targets; they are wishes.

Check capacity

Every growth target uses hours, so check you have them. If target 1 adds about $80,000 of work at a similar labour intensity to today, it needs roughly 400 extra technician hours. Where will they come from? Often the answer is target 2: higher renovation prices may shed some low-margin work and free those hours.

Step 4: Write the stop list

The stop list is the part of the plan that makes room for the targets. It names what you will deliberately do less of or stop altogether.

Examples from owner-run businesses in the region:

• stop quoting renovation jobs under a minimum size
• stop free estimates for work outside your core municipalities
• stop the directory listing that produced one job last year
• stop the owner personally scheduling every technician
• stop discounting for slow payers

Write three to five items. If the list feels uncomfortable, it is probably doing its job.

Step 5: Build a six-line scorecard

A scorecard is six to eight numbers you check on the same day each month. Keep it to figures you can pull in under an hour.

For the plumbing firm, a scorecard could be:

Leave blank any baseline you don't yet know, and fill it in within the first month.

Step 6: Put it on one page

The finished plan has five short blocks.

1. This year's focus in one sentence, for example "more planned replacements, fewer low-margin rough-ins".
2. Margin ranking of your lines of work, top to bottom.
3. Three targets with number, deadline and owner.
4. Stop list of three to five items.
5. Scorecard with six to eight measures.

Print it. Put it where your managers will see it. Review it at the same meeting each month.

Common mistakes

These are the mistakes that most often make a plan useless by spring.

• Ranking by revenue. Big lines are not always good lines.
• Ignoring travel. Across the CRD, drive time quietly erodes margin, especially for small jobs far from base.
• Targets without owners. A target with no name beside it drifts.
• No stop list. Without one, targets compete with everything you already do.
• Scorecards nobody fills in. Choose numbers your systems can produce easily, or the scorecard will die by March.
• Planning alone. Partners and managers who weren't involved rarely commit.

When to get help

Do it yourself first; get help if the numbers raise questions you can't settle. Owners often find that the ranking reveals a pricing problem, or that capacity is the real limit. Those are good reasons for a short advisory session or a full twelve-month growth plan.

If the plan depends on more enquiries, read our marketing budget guide next. If it depends on serving more of the region, read the service-area guide. Fees for help are on the pricing page.