Published on January 17th, 2023
A new year is here, and it’s the perfect opportunity to prepare for the future. For many businesses, preparation can mean the difference between growth and stagnation.
To avoid missing out on growth opportunities, prime your business to make the most of the next 12 months. Here are a few things you can do to ensure your business starts this year off on the right foot.
Invest In Contract Management Software
If your plans for the year involve growing your business, you’ll probably end up signing various contracts. Contracts are necessary for hiring full-time employees or contract workers on a project basis.
They’re also vital for protecting your assets and making sure you get a good outcome when you’re negotiating deals.
As helpful as they are, contracts can be time-consuming to generate. That’s where contract management software comes in.
A contract management platform can benefit your legal team (if you have one) and your overall business in a variety of ways. It can help you make better deals, cut contracting costs, and reduce errors.
Such platforms also save time by automating the contract creation and amendment processes. Your business will almost certainly enter into new contracts this year, which makes contract management software a worthy investment.
Create Goals For The Year
It’s pretty hard to achieve new levels of success if you never set goals. Consider some of the main accomplishments you want your business to achieve this year.
Speaking of contracts, do you want to bring on a certain number of new clients this year? Are you interested in entering a new global market? Perhaps you’re committed to growing your brand visibility or solidifying your reputation.
Setting big goals for your business shouldn’t be a one-person job. Get your management team together and ask them what milestones they would like to reach in the coming year.
Sales may want to increase the deal size by a certain percentage; marketing might be aiming for Page 1 search results for critical keywords. When multiple people are involved in the goal creation and planning process, your likelihood of success improves.
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Create An Action Plan To Reach Your Goals
Making goals is the easy part. The hard part is making sure you take the steps necessary to achieve them. Map out the process required to reach your main business goals by the end of the year.
Creating smaller goals to guide you toward your larger end-of-year goal can help immensely. Each time you reach a smaller goal, you’ll feel a rush of excitement that will help you maintain your momentum.
Let’s say the sales team’s main goal is to increase monthly recurring revenues by 40% by year’s end. They can pursue this goal in a number of ways, such as signing more clients or increasing MRR per deal, among others. To acquire more clients, they might set subgoals of making X client calls per week or sending out X proposals per month.
Scoring larger deals may require cultivating relationships with higher-level decision-makers. That, in turn, may mean setting a quarterly goal of attending X conferences where these senior business leaders gather.
Communicate With Your Team
Remember that wasted time often equates to wasted opportunity. Once you have primary goals and multiple smaller objectives to help you reach them, it’s time for the next step.
You’ll want to involve your team as soon as possible so you can get the ball of success rolling. Create actionable items each team member is expected to complete to help you reach the milestones you have outlined. Then make sure these action items are clearly communicated.
To keep track of assignments and monitor the progress of deliverables, project management software is a godsend.
Everyone on the team can see who is responsible for what and when project subtasks are due. Discussion boards allow team members to ask questions and collaborate on solutions, and this record of project decision-making is available to all.
Since every team member has visibility into workflow and status, there’s less need for managers to keep people on task.
Analyze Your Budget
Before you jump headfirst into executing your growth strategy for the coming year, you’ll need to analyze your budget. You’ve probably done your outgoing year’s books or are getting ready to complete them soon.
Review last year’s financial information to see what successes you experienced (sales were up!) and what areas still need improvement (so were costs!). This process can be tedious, but it’s necessary to make the best use of your funds this year.
Estimate the costs of everything from salaries to office supplies for the new year, as well as your expected revenues. Leave some wiggle room for unexpected expenses.
Once you have these figures in hand, you can allocate money to different departments and projects. Budgeting is a critical process for helping you maintain financial stability this year.
The way you begin the year can have a huge impact on how it ends. If you want to celebrate your accomplishments in 12 months, start working toward your goals now. With forethought, momentum, and a clear action plan, you can guide your business to unprecedented success this year.
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