The New Year is a great time to carry out new strategies and make room for improvements. It’s also an ideal time to reflect on the lessons learned from the past year and move forward with a plan on how you want your business to develop.
Whether you need to be expand your social media presence, keep up with the latest technology or invent innovative ways to find new customers, New Year’s resolutions can help small businesses create a plan and stick to it.
Here are five New Year’s resolutions to help you get started:
1. Jump on the tech bandwagon
If you haven’t yet already, make this the year you master technology in all aspects of your business. Use this tip by Mashable – a lot of the apps businesses use on laptops and desktops also have mobile versions.
This can make it easy for salespeople in the field to complete a sale without having to go back to the office to check inventory. Mobile payments also allow in-the-field employees to complete sales on the spot.
2. Build relationships with your customers
Finding innovate ways to engage with your customers is not so much a New Year’s resolution as it is an all-year round duty. Sara Angeles from Business News Daily says it is important to view your customers in terms of relationships, not transactions, so it is critical to bring value to them before and after the sale.
Create a unique community for your customers, for example set up an event, street fair or convention and invite your customers; there you can get to know them on a deeper level.
“Once goals are created, everyone needs to be reminded of them regularly”
3. Improve customer service
Looking ahead to 2015, customer service should be a priority for every small business. It’s a fact Angeles says, that customer service can make or break your relationship with current and even future customers.
Come up with new strategies for the New Year to draw in new, and maintain existing customers, such as special discounts or services that competitors don’t offer.
4. Get more social
The big three, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, have been adopted by many small businesses but according to the Huffington Post, 2015 is the year to increase their adoption of visual-based social networks like Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr and Slideshare, as earlier this year there has been a rise in visual social media platforms.
If you own a retail store, post product shots on Pinterest and link back to your website, or if you run a small events company post videos of your work on YouTube – a platform where videos have the tendency to go viral.
5. Make goals more memorable
Keep goals the resolutions or goals in front of yourself and everyone one else as many times goals are set only to be forgotten later. Once goals are created, everyone needs to be reminded of them regularly. There are many ways to do this like using bulletin boards to regular conversations in team meetings.
