Businesses of all sizes make annual commitments to boost revenues and outpace competitors prior to ringing in a new year.
And now that the calendar is well into the second quarter of 2015, it could be beneficial to take another look at your company’s original business resolutions to see what’s working and what needs improvement.
Whether it’s a large investment not panning out like you hoped or your company’s inability to rein in costs like you planned, resolutions can sometimes go awry in a matter of months, or even weeks.
Here are four ways you can get your business back on track:
-
Review first-quarter goals
While hindsight is always 20/20, when you first began formulating your yearly strategy, you could have overlooked certain items or not put enough thought into the real-world implications of your resolution.
For instance, many times, business goals can just appear as numbers on a spreadsheet or lofty expectations. However, if these aspects aren’t fully backed by the manpower or equipment to see these goals come to fruition, it’s easy to understand why your business’s resolution may not be going smoothly.
-
Hold a leadership meeting
Meet with your top managers and business partners to reassess your resolutions line by line. Coordinate with on-site project crews and trusted staff members to accurately track how much progress has been made on each specific venture.
Further, look at the books and see where you’re overspending and which portions of your resolution aren’t up to muster. Finally, allow others to evaluate where things might be going wrong to give you additional insight into the core metrics of your resolution.
-
Adapt and move forward
After you’ve reviewed your resolution, adjust your plan accordingly to the new business climate. In some areas, spring is fully underway while others are still thawing out from the winter. Likewise, local ordinances or regulations may have changed since the first of the year.
Factor these new conditions into your resolution and create new solutions, or simply adjust existing ones, to solidify your plan moving forward. The ability to stay flexible and adapt to an ever-changing business climate is a necessity, especially for small businesses with limited cash flow or market share.
-
Secure additional financing
In many cases, your goals may simply be underfunded. At other times, you may need a bit more breathing room in the form of a working capital loan to cover immediate expenses. If you’re confident in a certain proposition, such as hiring new workers or expanding into a new region, then you’re going to need the money to back these investments.
Instead of cutting back and making do with what you have, the key could be additional business financing to more thoroughly push your company over the hill toward greater success.
Just as the economy can change in the blink of an eye, so too can the future prospects of your business resolutions. But just because a short-term setback may be temporarily stalling progress, it doesn’t mean you should scratch your plans and go back to doing business the way you did in the past. The only way to truly make that leap ahead of your competitors is to take risks when it’s deemed necessary.