The holiday season is often a slow period for many small businesses, however I am here to remind you that what you do over the next couples of weeks will set the tone for 2014. While I certainly encourage you to spend time with your families and enjoy the holiday season, it’s important that you reflect on the past year and set the tone for 2014. Here are some examples of what we are doing in our business and with our clients to prepare for 2014:
- Examining successes and failures and making the appropriate adjustments. We are looking at what worked well during 2013, and expanding and improving it. For things that did not go well, they become learning opportunities and they are being eliminated in favor of more lucrative and productive projects and relationships.
- Client Relations: show your clients that you value the relationship by taking time to meet with them and thanking them for their business. At this time of year, it’s important to show your appreciation. Schedule a meeting to listen to your clients and discuss their plans for 2014; find ways that you can support them and add value to the relationship.
- Bid/Proposal Win/Loss Ratios: according to published reports, successful prime contractors only win approximately 52% of the bids and proposal that they go after, and that number declines significantly for smaller less experienced firms. To that end, if you are bidding, it’s important to analyze wins and losses and make appropriate adjustments in your strategy to increase win ratios.
- Certifications/Registrations/Bidder’s Lists: take a look at all of your certifications, and bidder’s registrations ensuring that information is current and up to date.
- Procurement Forecast – it’s important to identify projects that are coming out for bid in the next six months to year so that you can adequately prepare for those projects by analyzing competition, pricing and adding necessary resources.
- Examine your support teams – take a look at your external support teams ensuring that they are bringing value to your business. Some examples include bookkeeping, accountant, attorney, consultants, technical teams, teaming partners and strategic alliances. If they are not adding value, it may be a good time to consider making changes.
- Update Your Marketing Plan – your marketing plan should be mapped out for the next six months to a year. As an example, our plan maps out all of the major conferences and events we are attending, networking, direct mail, blog, email blasts, special offers, and training sessions. We know exactly what we are doing, when we are doing it and how much it will cost.
- Update Resumes/Capability Statements/Templates – this is a great time to take a look at your key personnel resumes/executive summaries and templates and make the necessary adjustments to reflect where you are now in your business. Adding accomplishments, years in business, milestones, successes and other information that will make your business stand out.
- 9. Invest in yourself/your business: in order to grow your business, you need to invest in yourself, your key people and your employees. Think about what you can do this year to add additional skills and bring new resources to the company. Examples include; attending a conference, adding training and hiring a coach. You should always be looking for opportunities to improve.
- 10. Assess your health and well-being – so often I see business owners running around, completely exhausted, haggard and depleted – some actually believing that this struggle is part of what they need to do to succeed. I am here to tell you that – it’s completely the opposite. Successful business owners know and understand the importance of self-care and importance of healthy habits such as getting enough rest, spending time with loved ones, and making healthy choices.
