My Business Goals for the New Year

Once again it’s the New Year.  For me, the New Year presents itself as a time to reflect what I have and have not yet accomplished in my life and business. Every year I spend January first reflecting my past year and thinking about my future goals. On January 2nd I wake up raring to go and write out my goals.

One of my business goals this year of course is to do more frequent blog posts. So here goes! :)
Another important goal is to make better use of my networking events by getting there early, bringing my name tag, remembering the names of the people I connect with and following up with them by connecting on LinkedIn afterwards.

Here are 10 other great business goals to help grow your business.

1. Organize your office – It’s always nice to start off the year fresh with a clean desk. Enter all those business cards into your database or at least put them nicely away and hire someone else to enter them in.
2. Set up a customer relationship management system - Whether it’s a manual whiteboard or a web-based tool, getting a grip on your sales funnel will help you better follow up on leads, stay in touch and provide better customer service.
3. Make business planning part of your daily or weekly routine – Schedule in time for writing, reviewing and adjusting your goals.  Write out manageable sub-goals and break them down into actionable task lists.
4. Delegate more – Write out the list of tasks you can delegate and try to find someone to do them. Remember you should be working on your business not in it.
5. Make marketing your business more consistent – Determine the most effective marketing strategies and add them to your routine business tasks. 
6. Add social media to your marketing plan – It’s finally time to jump on the bus! Read up or talk with someone about the best way to add in social media. Proper planning at the start will help you save time and create an integrated content strategy that is more effective.
7. Clean up your website –Now’s the time to make all the edits, optimize your pages, add in that blog, set up an affiliate program and put all the latest social media widgets to your site.  Best advice is to make up a wish list of what you want and get quotes. Sometimes it will be more efficient to redo the site into a content management system.
8. Streamline your business –Take a critical look at the services or products you are offering and eliminate those that are draining your resources and not adding to the bottom line.  This may not be overnight.
9. Automate and build systems – Look at what tasks you do on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Try to turn these into regular procedures that can either be streamlined, automated or delegated. Research new tools to make your work more efficient.
10. Learn something new – What do you want to learn more about to help your long term business goals? Sign up for a course, webinar or buy a book. Learning something adds new skills to your palette and helps keep the passion going.

Finally, not everything is about efficiency & money.  I want to love the work I do and the people I work with. This year I made a list of clients I  want to work with. Hopefully you made the list!  :) 

Goal Setting Resources: