It’s the time of year when I always look back over the past year and analyze what happened in my business, as well as my personal life.
This was a good year for many business owners. Business sales and traffic generally picked up from last year. It appears to be due to an increased positive business outlook that most people have – especially in the last quarter.
But we can all use this coming holiday time to analyze the past year and refocus our efforts to get going even stronger this next year.
The standard questions I usually ask myself.
- Did my business grow this year – in terms of overall sales and number of clients? If it did, what was the cause of it? If it didn’t, why?
- What prospecting methods seemed to work? Am I doing it daily, weekly or monthly?
- Have I increased my number of business contacts / referral sources?
- How many referrals did I provide this year?
- Are there any services or products that I provide, that my some of my current clients are not using?
- Are there any services or products I could add or improve upon?
- Do I have any monthly business expenses that I could cut out? (personal expenses also)
- What were the things that I wanted to do to build my business, but never found the time to do? Is it still important enough to follow through on?
- Are there any adjustments to my business plan or offering that I need to make?
- What are my business strengths and weaknesses? How do I improve on both?
- If I got up every morning 1 hour earlier, how much more could I accomplish each day? Especially if you consider how that extra hour added up all year? … 365 extra hours equates to 45 extra 8 hour days of work – An extra month and a half of work, or prospecting, or launching a new business idea!
The most important thing you can do is to be brutally honest with yourself. If you are self employed or work in sales, your business is your life.
Always get better. Always improve.
Remember: If your business isn’t growing, it’s dying.
So let’s make this next year the best ever!
