Small Business New Year’s Resolution Reboot

We’re two weeks in, how are those New Year’s Resolutions coming? If you’re struggling, let me give you a few suggestions to reboot your resolutions and focus on more manageable-but-valuable promises to yourself and your business:

• I will ask every employee for one suggestion on how we can make it easier for our customers and prospects to do business with us. I will reward those employees whose suggestions we use.
• I’ll learn how to use social media to become a better listener and find like-minded people and businesses.
• I will include more than senior staff in brainstorming sessions for a fresh voice.
• I’ll form a customer feedback group – inviting some of our best customers to dinner to give us unfiltered feedback about what we could be doing better.
• I’ll look for ways to develop a more evocative, generous referral program. Maybe I’ll start by asking my newly-formed customer feedback group …
• I will immediately ask my receptionist(s) what the 5-10 most often asked questions are from people calling, and I will make sure those questions are answered (and easy to find) on our website.
• I’ll ask my employees what charities matter to them, and we’ll find then focus on ways to help them.
• I will consider a professional website assessment.
• I’ll interview five senior citizens and five teenagers to get their views on how the world’s changing.
• I’ll use a news reader to push at least five articles a day towards me I should read but would never have the time to find on my own.
• I’ll make it a point to introduce two of my professional friends to each other if only because I think they’d dig each other.
• I’ll encourage my employees to each submit one idea for how our company can be more generous to local charities next year. I’ll reward the best ideas.
• I will conduct review sessions of each major initiative or promotion immediately following its execution to start planning how to improve it the next time we do it.
• I will charge someone to research media channels other than TV, radio, outdoor, and newspaper.

I could continue – but these are all simple and cheap and smart. Hope one or more of them find their way home to you.

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