New Year, New Plans

Use challenges as an opportunity to learn, evolve and reinvent your business.

- Busi Raphekwane

As a new year comes into view, it is normal to reflect on the one gone by. Hopefully, 2019 was a good year for you, however for most businesses this proved to be quite a challenging year.

As you start planning for 2020, you’re probably asking yourself a few questions, such as:

How do I ensure I have a better year than what I had in 2019?

How do I gain more clients?

How do I improve my competitiveness?

How do I maintain or improve my income in a tough economic business environment?

How do I become even more efficient so that I can make more profit?

These are all critical questions, and the answers can help shape your plans for the coming year…

1. How do I ensure that 2020 is a better year?

List all the things that went well and worked for the business, plus all the business’s achievements in the past year. For instance, perhaps you received really good feedback from your clients regarding your quick turnaround time. You need to examine and identify what made you achieve those results. This is what you’ll carry over to the new year to build on and make it an even better year.

Similarly, you need to write down the things that didn’t go well, and the things you had set out to achieve but didn’t. Then turn your thoughts to the lessons learned by not achieving some goals. This introspection is important so that we may continue learning and growing our capabilities as a business. This also gives us an opportunity to see what we need to leave behind and should not carry over in the new year.

2. How do I gain more clients?