Revisiting your resolutions

marketing So, we’re now into February. The Super Bowl is over, the holidays are especially over and it’s got me thinking about your New Years Resolutions for your business. Have those fallen by the wayside now that January is over?

I’d like to focus on getting refocused…yes? I want to do this by giving you the Top 10 New Years’ Resolutions Your Business Should Make. That’s right….in February.

Based upon what happened in 2009 and the nominal growth predicted for 2010, it’s not too late to develop some resolutions that will boost the performance of your business.

Here are 10 proven “Resolutions” that will make your business stronger and more resilient in 2010.

Develop a strategic plan for the year. Define what you want to accomplish and then develop a plan to get you there.You’re not going to get where you think you want to be, unless you know where you want to go. You should be able to write it down for all the people in your organization. That way, they’ll understand where it is you are going.
Put time down on your calendar to work on your business. Continued planning and reviewing your plans on a monthly basis is vital if you want a healthy, growing business. Take time to evaluate what did and didn’t work each month. That will help you set new directions or adjust old goals. This will help you stay on track and get to your destination.
Focus on profit. Over the years, I’ve met business owners who are ecstatic about the growth in their top line or expansion of territory or new product lines. However, profit is one of the key lubricants of a business. Profit enables expansion, strengthens borrowing ability, reduces costs, pays down debt and funds growth. Profit is critical to the survival of any business and most business owners focus too little attention on this most important concept.
Learn something new that will help you manage better. Set aside a couple of hours a month to improve an area where you have a definite weakness. Traditionally most business owners are weak in understanding of their financial data. There are a lot of great seminars that will enhance your understanding of financial information and how it is used in your company. My seminar series for example, will greatly strengthen your financial understanding from reading the numbers, profit, cash flow, business value and management.
Get to know your top 10 customers. Opportunity knocks when you are face to face with your customers and learning about their challenges and obstacles. There is tremendous synergy created when you take the time to meet and understand your customer’s needs. They appreciate your time and they like seeing the president in their facility.
Get a coach or mentor. A recent survey of business owners indicated that over 1/3 of them missed not having a sounding board or someone to talk too. Research has quantified that coaches will help business owners set better goals, maintain focus on key goals, improve profit, reduce stress and improve quality of life.
Promote your business regularly and consistently. Too often marketing and advertising fall to the bottom of the to-do list in a fast paced, crisis driven business. If you want to grow your business, you have to make marketing and advertising a priority. Take the time to create a marketing plan, it will help in your budgeting process, help in making poor, spur of the moment decisions and keep you focused on a monthly schedule.
Don’t make do, get a new one. Not every leader is eager to address poor performance, but weeding out a small number of “under performers” has a big impact on the rest of the workforce It gives the message that the organization is serious about tackling poor performance. Losing the worst and keeping the best helps improve organizational performance and re-energizes people.
Learn how to delegate and do more of it. There are many things to do when running a small business and it’s easy to deceive ourselves that we are the only one that can do it. Determine what your personal time is worth or your personal ROI and use that number to decide if someone else should do the task. Delegation strengthens your management team and builds strong leaders.
Reevaluate all suppliers in search for the best prices and services. There have been alot of pricing changes in commodities throughout 2008 and 2009. Checking your pricing between competitors may reveal that prices have in fact dropped and you were not getting the best pricing. Service is nearly as important so make sure a good price doesn’t detract from the level of service you need.

We help businesses create strategic plans. If any of the things above sound intimidating or time consuming, call us today. We’ll help you get organized and understand the things necessary to create abundance in your business.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 2:44 am and is filed under Business Financing, Cash flow, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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