WINNING IN 2023: STRATEGIES FOR SMALL BUSINESSES.

There is no secret formula for instant success. But there are plenty of strategies and good practices you can adopt to help your business thrive in 2023. A new year is a good time to renew, to reflect on what you can do differently to realise business growth. We have put together our top four strategies to help your business win in 2023.

STRATEGY 1: EVALUATE YOUR PERFORMANCE

Did you meet the goals you set for the past year? If you did, what were the key factors that contributed to your success. If you didn’t, why did you fail? What challenges did you face and how do you intend to overcome them in 2023? Evaluating your business is an opportunity for you to deeply reflect on and learn from your successes and failures.

When evaluating your business, consider these key aspects:

Financials: take a close look at your income and expenses for the past year. This will give you a good idea of where your business is financially and where you need to improve. The key questions here are: did you realise your financial goals? Why or why not? What did you do well that you want to continue in 2023?

Customer satisfaction: did you continue delivering value to your customers? How satisfied are they with your offering? Keeping track of your customer base is important because you want to cultivate loyalty. Remember that while gaining new customers is important, keeping the ones you have is just as important and will save you resources on marketing.

Talent management: often, we forget about the people that keep the business running – your employees and partners. Together reflect on your experiences for the past year. Are they happy with how things are running? How can you do better. Collective reflection is especially vital as it gives your workers a sense of ownership.

2. SET NEW GOALS FOR THE NEW YEAR

Once you have a good idea of what worked well and what didn’t in the past year, set goals for the new year. Remember to put into account the lessons from the past year. Remember break down the big goals into smaller, more manageable pieces. An example of a bigger goal is increase sales of product X for 500 to 700 per month. Make your goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and with a clear timeline.

3. GET TO WORK

It’s not enough to set goals. You must start putting in the work. Depending on what your priorities are, you will need to determine the tasks that are required to deliver on your goals. If expanding sales is one of your goals (it is for most of us), then you will need to develop a marketing plan to help you attract more customers.

Here are some things you need to think about:

• Define your target market: Who are your customers? What needs do they have that your product or service can address? When you know who you are targeting, it is easy to develop effective strategies.
• Set realistic marketing goals: It is ok to be ambitious but do not set yourself up for failure. Your marketing goals should be ambitious enough to realise your business goals but not too ambitious that they cannot be realised.
• Determine your budget: You do not have to rob the bank to market your products. You can market on a small budget if you capitalise on inexpensive methods such as encouraging your customers to refer to you their friends and families and utilising your social media. Even then, you need a budget to reach potential customers beyond your networks. This will for instance mean spending on social media adverts, investing in a website, and printing professional catalogs.

4. TRACK YOUR PROGRESS

Revisit your goals regularly to ascertain whether you are making progress or not. It is a good practice to do this at least once a month. Reflecting on how you are doing will help you to arrest any problems and to ensure that you only put money into strategies that work.
Here are some questions to guide your reflection:
I. Did we achieve the targets/goals for this period?
II. What were the major wins for the business?
III. What were the top failures? What caused those failures?
IV. If the goals were realised, how can the gains be sustained? How can we keep winning?
V. Where we failed, what do we need to do differently?
Remember to keep records of these reflections to help you determine whether the process is yielding any results or not.

Let us know what strategies you are using to win in 2023

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