As part of your fresh start to a new year, why not go through your client and contact list and see if you can stir up some new business from some of the clients and contacts that you haven’t heard from in a while.

Going through your contact list and making some phone calls and sending some emails is an easy way to cull out some truly dead leads that don’t need to be cluttering up your contact list and bring your business to the forefront of the minds of people who haven’t thought about you in recent months, at the same time.

Timing is important in all types of sales, and you never know when your unexpected phone call or email message may come just as someone is considering the very product you have to offer. You want to be sure yours is the name that comes to mind, whether it is immediately or a few months down the road.

Even if the individual you contact isn’t in the market for what you have to offer, someone in their sphere of influence is bound to be. Again, you want your business to be the first to come to their mind when someone mentions a need for the product or service you provide.

Some businessmen and salesmen make this a New Year’s tradition. Their clients can always expect to hear from them shortly after the new year begins. It is one tradition that could be a very profitable one.

When you create your budget based off previous years experience and then adjust for expected increases or decreases in the new year, you should have a pretty good forecasting gauge.

With a good budget in place, by the time you hit midyear, you should be able to tell whether or not you need to tighten your belt or not.

Of course, you can put together the best budget in the world, but if you never look at your budget reports or never take any action on what they tell you, those budgets were a waste of time. So what should you be looking for when you compare your actual figures with your budgeted figures?

Start with the majors and move to the minors is the first rule with reading your budget reports. Compare the totals: total revenue, total gross profit, total expenses, total net income. Which of these are up or down from what was budgeted? Are the variances significant and do you know why they are up or down from what was projected? These are the majors.

If there aren’t any issues with the majors, then there generally isn’t any need to look at the minors. The minors are the individual revenue and expense accounts that are included in the major totals. If one, or more, of your majors is out of sync with its budget, then you will want to take a look at the minors. If your total expenses are over budget, which areas or accounts are creating that overage? Is it office supplies? Or, have your utilities run higher than expected? You can’t do anything to correct an over-budget problem unless you know what is causing it.

Perhaps your issue is not high expenses but low revenues. Knowing this gives you the opportunity to look at what has not happened in that area that you had expected to. Has there been an overall decline or is there one particular aspect of your sales that is down? Have you lost clients or just not gained the amount of new clients you expected? Again, knowing what is creating the difference between budgets and actuals gives you the power to do something about it.

Once you’ve studied your budget reports and determined what the issues are, you can then begin to strategize for how to adjust your approach to business for the remainder of the year. Your budget reports may tell you that your business is healthy and strong, or that it is ailing in some way.

If they do show a problem, now you can address it before it’s too late. Do you need to cut expenses? Do you need to increase advertising? Do you need to increase your profit margin? Your budget reports will help you make those decisions. But, they can only do that, if you create the budgets in the first place. So, if you haven’t done it yet, now is the perfect time to get those budgets done for 2011.

What better time to re-start a blog than with a whole new logo and design?

Stay tuned for application reviews, bookkeeping tips, and the whole nine yards.