A new year is a great time to refocus your business goals and start 2022 on a high. In this blog, we’ll aim to motivate you with your new business planning and provide a few things you should consider when mapping out your business strategies.
The well-known saying “New Year, New You” rings true with entrepreneurs making ‘building a business’ their New Year’s resolution. It might be that you’re looking to improve on the way your company performed last year and using the new year as your signal to do it.
How successful were you last year?
Define what you would consider as successful for your company. Then revisit last years stats so that you can work out what you need to do differently this year!
There are tons of ways to measure your success from 2021. Compare your total income for each month and working out the percentage increase or decrease. Looking at this will help you when it comes to setting your goals for 2022.
If your main goal isn’t income-based, there are other statistics you could measure. Take a look at your customer service ratings by assessing client feedback and understanding what you did wrong and what you can change to support your customers needs in 2022.
What business goals would you like to achieve this year?
One of the most important steps for your 2022 business plan is deciding on your goals for the year! Make sure to ask yourself what would you like to achieve this year? And be specific, which means no obvious goals like ‘make more money’ or ‘grow the business’. Instead make sure your goals are structured, realistic and relate to certain areas or departments.
If you’re looking to ‘make more money’ for e.g., consider setting some sales goals and improving your process. This could be investing more money into marketing and advertising. Or even implementing a sales management tool that allows your employees to manage their leads more efficiently.
Understanding the difference between objectives and goals is crucial. A goal is a long-term target that helps point your business activities on the right path without worrying about the nitty gritty details. An objective tends to be more specific, with measurables and some sort of deadline. For e.g., expanding your network would be the goal and considering how you would do this would be the objective. Both of these are important for your business strategy.
Have you considered changes in the market?
The new year can be seen as a fresh start. One of the biggest differences that a business might want to consider is changes happening within the market that they operate in and sell to.
Understanding the changes in your market is important for a business’s growth. It’s about knowing what your customers or clients need from you. If for e.g. technology is drastically changing the way customers like to shop, then you need to consider how you can implement these modern advancements into your business like QR codes or ecommerce support. If you think your consumer’s shopping behaviour is likely to change during 2022 then get ahead of the game and start putting measures in place to support them!
Other markets to consider is your competitors. Adjust your sales or marketing strategy to account for potential new industry competitors in 2022 that might make an appearance in the market.
What can you improve internally?
It’s all fine and well planning how you will advertise your products and sell to customers… but have you thought about what’s going on internally to support that?
Infrastructure is key. Take the time to align your strategies with the infrastructure of your business and stress-check that everything is functioning as it’s meant to. You wouldn’t want your work force to be distracted by out of date software/technology and tedious long-winded processes.
How we communicate is pivotal to success. Try putting yourself in your clients, suppliers, staff, and other business stakeholders’ shoes… has your business communication been as effective as it could be? Whether written, or verbal, taking a good luck at examples of your business communication can highlight the areas that need improving and this could ultimately lead to better business and business relationships!
The Retail industry has been on a real rollercoaster during the pandemic. In an age where public crowds are less appealing, independent retail stores have triumphed against their bigger supermarket rivals. But as things start to simmer down… what support will there be for the independent retailers? Check out our blog for more.
