Setting (And Sticking To!) Your New Year Business Resolutions
Most people make new year’s resolutions. Whether it’s to take up running, try to eat more healthy foods, or make more time to read. But have you ever thought about setting new year’s resolutions for your business?
What type of resolutions might you make for your business?
Whether you want to increase your client base or get better at forecasting your cash flow, think about what you want to achieve in business, and then set your resolutions from there. Struggling to think of goals that might help you grow and develop as a company? We’ve got some ideas to get you started.
Delegate more
Delegation is one of the most common things that business leaders and managers struggle with. However, it’s also one of the key things that you need to master if you want your business to move to the next level. Delegating tasks empowers your employees to take control of their own role.
What’s more, delegating tasks will save you time, allowing you to focus on other tasks like building your brand, chasing leads, or seeking investment. It will enable you to provide more strategic direction for your business rather than getting bogged down in the day to day, and it’s likely for this reason that CEOs who excel in delegating generate 33% higher revenue.
Get better at planning ahead
Do you manage your business on a month-to-month basis? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. But for the new year you might want to focus on improving your long-term planning. With Float’s scenario planning feature, you can scope out and plan for potential problems in your business before they cause a cash flow crisis. That might mean thinking about what would happen if you lose a client or if invoices aren’t paid on time, allowing you to take steps to mitigate the problem. You can also plan for more positive scenarios, like making a senior hire or moving to a new office space.
Improving your forward planning will help you to build a clearer picture of what the future might look like for your business, meaning you can better spot opportunities for growth and development, rather than taking it as it comes.
Up your networking game
Networking strikes fear into the heart of many business owners, but it really is useful, and something you should consider adding to your new year’s resolutions for 2022. Networking can help you to find new business opportunities, clients, vendors and collaborators. It’s a great way to meet like-minded people, and you might even end up making some friends who understand the ups and downs of being a small business owner. Take a look at sites like Eventbrite, Meetup and Facebook groups to find events in your local area – and if you can’t find any that appeal to you, why not start your own?
Improve your marketing
When you’re a busy business owner with lots of clients to deal with, employees to manage, and admin to keep on top of, making time for your own marketing can be difficult – but it should be on your list of things to focus on in 2022.
Marketing can help your business in a range of different ways, from generating new leads to simply getting your name out there. A recent HubSpot survey found that the top marketing priority for companies in the next 12 months was generating new leads, followed by increasing customer satisfaction, then increasing brand awareness, closing more deals, and finally increasing customer retention.
Consider what your goals are, and then develop strategies that will help you to achieve them. This could include a social media strategy that will increase your engagement across social channels, a content marketing strategy to develop interesting, in-depth content, an email marketing strategy, and more. If you’re not sure where to start, consider hiring an external marketing agency to support you – and if you’re struggling to justify the expense, research suggests that content marketing is effective at generating leads as well as being an exceptionally cost-effective channel. One study highlighted that content marketing generates over three times as many leads as outbound marketing and costs 62% less.
Forecast your cash flow
If you don’t already do cash flow forecasting, make this top of your list for 2022. Cash flow forecasting is a plan of when cash will come into and out of your business, while clearly showing what you’ll have in your bank account at the end of the month. It’s an incredibly useful tool that’ll give you a visual understanding of fluctuations in your business cash, manage surplus cash, and plan for potential cash gaps. Using a tool like Float’s cash flow forecasting can save you time and ensure that your business’s future looks bright.
How to stick to your resolutions
Once you’ve decided on your resolutions, how can you ensure you see them through?
Be specific with your goals
Whilst your overall goal might be to ‘start marketing’, that’s a very broad goal – and if a goal is too broad, it’s difficult to know where to start, let alone stick to it. Instead, break it down into more manageable steps. Consider what your goals are here – is it to improve your social media visibility, or start creating content for your blog? If so, then your goal to focus on might be to develop a social media strategy or develop a content marketing plan.
Break it down into smaller steps
Once you’ve narrowed your focus then you can determine the steps you need to take to achieve them. If you’ve decided to focus on developing a content marketing strategy, rather than just looking at marketing as a whole, then you might want to think about small, manageable steps you need to work towards to achieve that goal, such as improving your social media presence or looking at search engine optimisation.
Remove barriers to taking action
Is there anything standing in the way of reaching your goals? Let’s say your goal is to improve your cash flow forecasting and scenario planning, but you don’t have time to keep on top of it. If you need to do something manually, then you might never get round to it – but you can remove that barrier by enlisting the help of a tool like Float.
Form habits
It takes an average of 66 days for new behaviour to become a habit. So you can’t just expect new year’s resolutions to stick in a day, a week or even a month after you set them. Do you want to get better at networking? Then you need to get into the habit of attending networking events. Even if there are only monthly meetups in your area, there are lots of great forums online and Twitter chats – participating in these is a form of networking too. If there’s a Twitter chat in your subject area every Monday morning, then add it to your calendar to sit down with a cup of coffee and speak to your peers. Soon, it’ll become part of your routine and you won’t have to think twice about it.
Tell people your resolutions
Whether you announce your new business goals to the whole company, or tell a select few people, resolutions are a whole lot easier to stick to when you have someone to hold you accountable.
Are you ready to start the new year on the right foot by improving your cash flow forecasting? Sign up today to start your free 14-day trial of Float and get a head start on your new year’s resolution!
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