Take Stock and Set Professional Goals

Most personal resolutions in the new year revolve around health and productivity, but the new year is also a good time to take stock of your business and set some professional goals for the year.

To become a better business owner in 2015, consider adopting some of the following resolutions.

· Develop or revise a business plan. Planning your business is crucial to creating successful growth. If you haven’t taken the time to write a formal business plan, it’s never too late to start. If you already have a business plan, use the new year as a chance to reevaluate your plan and bring it up to date. Lay out a realistic budget for the year as well as brainstorming your goals and doing some local market research. The more you’re able to plan the direction you want to take your business in 2015, the easier it will be to set intermediary goals and make decisions about day-to-day business operations.

· Revamp your action plans. Once you’ve created or revised your business plan, take a look at some of the other procedures that shape the way you do business. If you have plans for how often you follow up with your network, what steps you take when you get a new client and the tasks you complete, make sure they’re up to date and match up with how you want to run your business this year. If you don’t have plans standardizing these procedures, create them now. Give yourself structures to keep your networking, marketing, and client care consistent and successful.

· Review your failures and your successes. Take some time to sit down and go over your numbers from 2014. How did you do? Were there ways you could have better served your clients? Did you discover a great new way to send email follow-ups? No matter how good or bad the last year was, spend some time analyzing each win or loss and how you can learn from it.

· Reorganize your desk. This may seem elementary, but it’s amazing how much work time you can lose when you’re drowning in a sea of paper. It’s hard to be an effective business person when you can’t find any of the documentation you need. Throw away those stacks of receipts from fifteen years ago and digitize the papers that you don’t need in hard copy. While you’re at it, look through your hard drive and get rid of any files that you don’t need. Make sure your folders, digital and analog, are organized in a way that makes sense to you and allows you to access important information quickly. If you’re having serious trouble keeping your office in any sort of order, consider talking to a professional organizer.

· Think about your goals, both long-term and short-term. Where do you see your business going? When you’ve come up with these goals, write them down somewhere you can look at them every day.

· Start paying more attention to your field. This year, make an effort to read more news and articles related to your industry. Staying up-to-date on the local market, national trends, and the most effective practices in the industry will allow you to be a more effective businessperson and help you connect with others in the profession.

· Take control of your local search results. Many search engines, including Bing and Google, allow companies to take control of the pages that come up from searches for local businesses. Find out what all websites will allow you to contribute to local search listings and make sure your business is listed, along with all your contact information.

· Rebuild or update your website. So much business is done on the Internet that having a modern, intuitive website is your greatest weapon. Try using a platform like WordPress for a simple but professional template. Connect your professional social media feeds to the site, and try to choose a design that also works well on mobile devices. If web design and content aren’t your forte, it would be well worth it to hire a professional.

· Back up your hard drive. Most of your business probably exists on your computer, and a computer crash can destroy a lot of data. Use this time to either choose a cloud service (likeSkySuite) to upload your data onto or to acquire an external hard drive as a backup. This way, if your internal hard drive should happen to fail, you won’t lose all of your client and listing data.

· Take a break. Many professionals struggle with finding balance between working hard and giving themselves time to recover. Schedule a few fifteen- to thirty-minute breaks into your day to allow yourself a chance to disconnect and breathe. In the new year, schedule a serious vacation or two. The better rested and more refreshed you are, the better you can perform in the office.

Take Stock and Set Professional Goals