Beginning a new year offers us a time to reflect on the past and the future of our business - to think about what went well and where we might have fallen short of expectations. It is also a good time to make changes, to resolve to leading your business in a manner that assures steady progressive growth.Based on 12 years of experience working with privately-held business owners, this will typically mean doing things significantly different than you have in the past.
To be a catalyst to this positive change, I offer my top ten resolutions for growth in 2015.
In 2016, I resolve to:
- Have a well vetted, market-based plan that defines our future state in a measurable way (3-years and 1-year from now) - customer mix, sales, operations, etc..
- Share that plan with our employees so they too know what we are striving to achieve and how they can be a part of our success.
- Operate to that plan - to get things done and hit milestones when we said we would - and that there will be real repercussions for failing to do so.
- Not make a single spontaneous buying decision for professional services or capital equipment - I will let the plan dictate these important cash expenditures.
- Know who we are competing against by company name.
- Strive to differentiate from our competitors - and if we can’t - to out-market them as one would do if selling a commodity product/service like toothpaste, accounting services, banking, web development, etc....
- Know who are our target customers and that it be narrowly defined - consistent with the size of our marketing and sales force.
- Recognize that all marketing activity has ultimately one purpose - to generate qualified leads for our sales force. Thus, I will plan our expenditures and measure its effectiveness accordingly.
- Know and rationalize in business terms our social media presence/activity.
- Make good hiring decisions - which are driven by the plan, and starts with a written job description outlining the necessary experience and performance expectations, pay and benefits..
Wishing you the greatest success in 2016!
About the author. Mike Gomez is President of Allegro Consulting, a growth specialty firm helping businesses plan and execute aggressive growth strategies. He grew his very first client’s business from $8M to $35M in just two years. Mike is a sales process and growth strategy evangelist, prolific speaker, writer, three-time marathoner, a former military officer and pilot of both aircraft and helicopters. He is also an advisor at Atlanta Tech Village and Four Athens Tech Incubator. www.allegroconsultant.com
