As we say goodbye to 2024, and welcome in 2025, now is the time to put some New Year’s resolutions in place to help your business grow. Whether you’re looking to expand, employ more people or increase your profits, we’ve put together some useful tips.
Outsource more areas of the business
Many small business owners are used to doing everything for themselves. However, this isn’t generally the best approach to have. You’re not an expert in every aspect of business and you shouldn’t act like you are. Outsourcing areas of work to a third party will also give you more time to focus on growing the business.
Services to look at outsourcing include debt recovery, credit control, sales, marketing and your website. There will obviously be additional costs associated with this, but this can be offset by the growth you’ll see in the business.
Update your business plan
Have you even got a business plan? If not, you should definitely set aside time to write one. Often businesses put together a plan at the start, but they never think to revisit it regularly. This is essential to understand where your business is going and what areas you should be focusing on.
A good business plan will guide you along the right route to grow your company. It will focus your mind, help you stay organised and will illustrate your plans to any potential investors. Therefore, it’s a crucial element to your success in 2025.
Reduce your overheads
One of the main issues for businesses, when they are struggling financially, is the number of overheads they have. Whatever the financial status of your company, the start of the year is a good opportunity to see where you can cut costs. This doesn’t mean being detrimental to the success of the business, but looking at where you can spend less.
For example, are you out of contract with any of your utility, phone or internet companies? There might be a package or provider with lower fees. It’s always worth shopping around.
Has your business downsized recently? Do you still need a large office space? If you could manage with a smaller office and you are coming to the end of a lease or have a break clause, decreasing your rental payments could substantially reduce your overheads.
Prioritise your credit control
Ensuring that you have sufficient cash to pay your own suppliers is essential, so it’s important to keep on top of your debtors. You need to have a system of credit control in place that focuses on collecting late payments before they become too overdue. Allowing customers to continuously pay late, without any form of recovery, sets up the expectation that you won’t chase them and encourages late payments.
Improve your delegation skills
One area that small business owners are often bad at when they grow is learning to delegate tasks to employees. Historically you will have done everything yourself, but as you grow and expand your team it’s important to pass on some areas. This gives you time to focus on the larger tasks. In the beginning, it can feel like it takes longer to teach someone to do the work and it’s easier to do it yourself. However, in the long run, this will provide you with more time to concentrate on growing the business and getting more sales.
Increase your marketing
One of the main ways of generating a greater number of sales is to increase your marketing efforts. Showing up consistently on a variety of different channels and promoting the business regularly is a priority. A key New Year’s resolution for the business should be to develop your own marketing plan. If you don’t think you have the skills to do this adequately, then there are marketing experts available who can support you.
Focus on your website
The majority of customers will search Google for the type of business they are looking for. That’s why it’s essential that you have an up to date, clear and professional looking website. Even if you won’t be selling through the internet, having a platform from which to attract new customers is crucial. This is an area that you could look to outsource.
Schedule time for business planning
Often business planning is left as an afterthought when you’re busy running the day-to-day operations. However, make it a non-negotiable element in 2025 and set aside time every week to concentrate on planning. Having a planning session lets you see where the business is now, where you want to be, and how you are going to get there. This shouldn’t just be something you do quarterly, or even monthly, schedule in an hour or so every week and you’ll realise how important it is to the business.
Have realistic goals
When you’re setting goals for the business, it’s essential that they are realistic. Otherwise, you will feel deflated when you don’t reach them. Where you succeed in getting to your goals it gives you a sense of achievement and that you can go further. Not reaching the unrealistic goals you set will just leave you feeling deflated.
Move away from areas that don’t work
As small business owners, we all have those ideas that sound fantastic on paper. Unfortunately, they don’t always pan out in real life and can end up costing us more than we make. If you’ve launched a product or service that hasn’t become a great seller and isn’t working, then stop doing it. You’re just wasting valuable time, energy and money that would be better invested in areas that are profitable.
In our personal and business life, we often set ourselves New Year’s resolutions and don’t always stick to them. If you go into 2025 with positive intentions for the business and have a focus for the year then you’re likely to succeed.