“Let me tell you Khai, I was very proud announcing our Revenue Growth Target in our meeting. We never had a target for the business since we were busy fulfilling the orders for the past years. Since we’re growing, I wanted to set a target for the business. I believed we are to going naturally grow this year since purchases are increasing. We just have to make sure we sell more this year right? That’s what I thought in the meeting.

Then my Finance Manager hit me in the face with a question;

“but…how do we ensure that we will achieve the (revenue) target?”

I was struck. Ahh…right…we just need to break the numbers down to the months and weeks so we can ensure we will achieve those numbers at year end! Yes! That will solve the question!

So we put the financial targets for the months and weeks; revenue should be at xx, cogs at xx, gross at xx, overhead at xx, and the profit should be 35%. We did the same thing for the weeks by dividing the numbers by 4 or 5 depending on how many weeks a month would have.

I was proud yet again. I felt like I’ve cracked the code and we’re going to be one of those successful companies. You know, those that take off in every industry. They perform well, attract loyal customers, hire talented people, create amazing products, and make lots of cash. They get great support for customers, employees, partners, and even the media.

I was almost sure that we will grow the business and achieve that rev target this year…

“The managers will help to watch the costs while the purchases increase because our products are really good and since we have also seen the same trend of purchases over the past year, we just have to make sure we are selling more every month according to the monthly targets. Yes! Everything will be according to plan!” — That was literally my thought.

We ended the meeting with smiles on our faces and 3 months goes by…

It’s not working. We are hitting some of the weeks targets but we are not performing as expected at all for the months.

“what went wrong? where did it went wrong?”

Then I unintentionally ended up asking myself a similar question my finance asked during the meeting;