It’s that time of year and as the New year unfolds, the wider business world is joining us in awakening from a proverbial, festive hangover, proving the mantra that ‘money never sleeps!’. Of course, it’s natural to be reflective about the previous year, and be hopeful of further progress in 2016. So in the common tradition of ‘New Year’s resolutions,’ we here in Advance Systems have compiled a list of changes your business can make to improve productivity and fulfil your potential for 2016.
Engage with Social Media
Although this may seem obvious a staggering amount of businesses are still reluctant to invest heavily in social media, despite the fact that social media marketing is one of the most important facets of marketing in the modern business world. Why not harness a competitive edge and put a greater onus on social advertising and increase brand recognition. The reality is that in this growing market of ours, your competitors are inevitably allocating more and more funds to marketing (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn). Unfortunately the task of promoting a small business slips to the bottom of the to-do list as a result of a considerably smaller budget than their big corporation competitors.
The truth is if you want to attract new customers, you have to make product promotion a priority. Inactivity in social media results in a litany of missed opportunities that your competition are more than happy to take advantage of. Although it’s likely that you won’t have time to dedicate full time to this social media marketing yourself, you might want to consider hiring a social media management company to step in. Make a New Year’s resolution to hire a marketing expert, or take the time to create a marketing plan on your own and follow through. The results will pay for themselves.
Step Out of your Comfort Zone.
Learning new skills and initiatives may be the difference between increasing overall sales and stagnancy. For example, attending business improvement seminars or sales force training programmes will positively impact your workforce productivity and employee morale ten-fold. By choosing to learn and develop as an innovator is a direct form of self-improvement. This willingness to step outside of your comfort zone does not have to directly pertain to your business, in fact even if it is completely unrelated, you will garner a different perspective on all aspects of your working environment.
Stepping out of your comfort zone and learning something new will definitely add to your skills and create a better working environment for those around you while also ensuring you achieve a healthy work-life balance. Make it a New Year’s Resolution to attend things you would be otherwise uncomfortable doing, it will do your business the world of good.
This willingness to step outside of your comfort zone does not have to directly pertain to your business, in fact even if it is completely unrelated, you will garner a different perspective on all aspects of your working environment. Stepping out of your comfort zone and learning something new will definitely add to your skills and create a better working environment for those around you while also ensuring you achieve a healthy work-life balance. Make it a New Year’s Resolution to attend things you would be otherwise uncomfortable doing, it will do your business the world of good.
Be Decisive
No matter how convinced you are by individual products, the reality is they aren’t all going to be super sellers. If you recognise this from an early stage, don’t be afraid to be ruthless and discontinue all sales of it, before it hurts your business. By doing this you will save yourself time and money in the long run. Equally, some methods aren’t going to work for certain individuals, if you spot that a certain strategy with a certain individual is ineffective, it is a necessity that you tackle it immediately. By letting unsuccessful plans continue you are being indecisive and ultimately hurting your business in the long run.
It is also a reality that some suppliers or contractors aren’t going to be ideally suited to your business, knowing when to sever ties with people who aren’t contributing anything to your workforce is an unfortunate but necessary aspect of management today.Although you may ultimately feel that relations could improve, the substantial risk is not worth the potential reward. The key to productivity is knowing when to make decisions and who to deal with If a technique or a product or a business relationship isn’t
Although you may ultimately feel that relations could improve, the substantial risk is not worth the potential reward. The key to productivity is knowing when to make decisions and who to deal with If a technique or a product or a business relationship isn’t working. Don’t invest a lot of energy into trying to make the unworkable workable. Be decisive. Make it your New Year’s Resolution to be confident enough to make changes at critical times, rather than ride out bad spells.
The start of the year is the perfect time to take stock of how far you have progressed in the previous year and equally what mistakes you may have made. It’s also an ideal time to prepare and set goals for the year ahead and decide on some resolutions and goals that you would like to accomplish in 2016. Whether you believe it to be necessary or not, it’s important to try and improve your business in as many ways as possible, and you can start by implementing the above resolutions. Happy New Year from all the staff at Advance System!
