Planning & Preparing for the New Business Year:
A To-Do List for Every Type of Business

In order to best foresee and accomplish the organizational goals for the new year, every organization should make an annual assessment of their business positioning and strategies. Here are a few guidelines to use for making sure your company is ready to take on the challenges of a new year:

Review Current Projects: Capture lessons learned, customer stories, and case studies.

The delivery of your products or services reveals many aspects of your business, and improving delivery is a crucial element to business evolution.    If you haven't already done so, now is a good time to look at the positive and negative experiences of the year's' projects. The perceived value of your business is reflected in your success stories with your customers and your most important projects.

Survey customers to measure satisfaction and look for opportunities.

It is a best practice to conduct periodic customer satisfaction surveys, which are ideally completed immediately after a project or customer experience.  This type of survey is meant to capture the satisfaction of the customer in order to address issues or validate your processes and outcomes.  This type of survey can also help identify your customers' motivation for doing business with you.

Define your core value and refine ideal customer definition.

Successful businesses are continually refining their core value to the marketplace. What may have helped you stand out from the crowd in the past could become commonplace. Ensure this doesn't happen by validating any key differentiators that separate you from the competition. The last quarter of the year is a great time to verify that the differences you have created are still attractive to your market.

Update your business and marketing strategy, budgets, and your marketing calendar.

Include the knowledge you have gained from the previous points above to update your Marketing strategy, budget and calendar. Be specific with your plans and establish the actions and the measurements you can use to gauge success. Your marketing strategy should include the development of content, service innovation, execution of seasonal programs, advertising, and the other elements that will require your marketing focus and efforts next year.

Update your referral marketing system resources with current material.

Referrals drive many businesses and word of mouth advertisement can be a significant means of business growth. Your referral marketing engine needs to be periodically tuned with updated case stories, references, education material, and programs.  Your customers and partners should understand your ideal customer profile and how best to refer business to you.

Also in This Issue

• Fitness 101 for your Business: Tips for a Leaner 2014
• Determining Your Technology ROI
• Calculate Your Managed Backup ROI
• Avoid Data Loss--and Revenue Loss--with Managed Backup
• Leverage Lightpath Security for Your Business
• Customer Spotlight: Engineered Security Systems (ESS)
• Family-Friendly Tri-State Winter Activities