If you’ve ever made a New Year’s resolution, you know that it’s all too easy to make them, and much more difficult to keep them. From unused gym memberships to garage organization plans that never happen to books you just haven’t found the time to read, the sheer volume of well-intentioned commitments we let fall by the wayside as we get into the heart of a new year can be overwhelming.
The important thing, however, is not to let all those missed targets overwhelm you; if you really want to get that stuff done, you can make a plan that breaks the necessary actions into components and work on it day by day.
The same is true of the plans you made for your business coming into the new year. Now that you’re actually in the thick of it, delivering on those long-term goals can feel like a burden in light of how much you already pour into the day to day. Fortunately, we have three easy tips to help you keep your retail resolutions and boost your revenue throughout the year.
Let’s jump right in!
Tip #1 – Don’t Try to Do Everything at Once
Just as many New Year’s resolution makers have injured themselves in the gym trying to get jacked overnight, a lot of retail business owners take on too much at the start of the new year and wind up feeling buried by it all by February or March. When you have a little downtime over the holidays to make your Big Plan, it’s easy to get a little overly ambitious, thinking you can knock everything out in the first quarter. That, my friend, is an easy recipe for stress.
Instead of trying to take on the whole world in the span of a couple of months, break your plan into bite-sized segments. Decide what the key objectives are you want to achieve, and then break the plan driving you towards those objectives into smaller goals. After you have those supporting goals divided out, you can fit them into a schedule on your terms, on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis.
As an example, suppose that your objective is to completely overhaul your consumer finance program. You might then break that down into four separate goals, such as researching and finding a solution to help you automate your finance program, upskilling your staff on the consumer finance front, updating your marketing materials and in-store signs to better advertise consumer financing as an option, and nailing down what you want your reporting process to look like.
You can then take those goals and order them by priority. In the case of the example above, looking for that foundational solution that will touch every other aspect of your finance program should probably be your first step, but you can go ahead and start on the others and get the ball rolling while you do your research.
Tip #2 – Rely On Your Team
Mutual accountability is important for keeping any resolution, and, as with the examples above, this also applies in the retail world. You need to get every member of your organization onboard with your vision, but to do that, you’ll need to pitch it to them, and make them see how they are truly a part of your retail business’s success. Everyone wants to feel like they matter and like they are needed and relied on. The best way to demonstrate to your team members that that is the case is simply to, well, rely on them!
Don’t try to do everything on your own. Explain what you are looking to accomplish in the new year to your team, and ask them to help you keep up with the schedule you set. Positive reinforcement can go both ways with employer and employee – just as employees want to feel valued by their leaders, leaders want to feel respected by and useful to the people who work for them. By involving your employees in your planning at the end of the year and early in the new year, you can make them feel like more a part of your team than ever before, and establish trusted backups you can count on throughout the year.
Tip #3 – Simplify Your Life
If the new year is all about going out with the old and in with the new, then it stands to reason that you should try your best to take anything that made your job as a retail business decision maker overly complicated last year out of the picture and bring in anything that will simplify it and make it easier.
Take FormPiper, for example. As a comprehensive solution for automating consumer financing, FormPiper delivers convenient managed or self-managed services to fit your needs, robust reporting delivered via an easy-to-use dashboard, streamlining of the application process through the elimination of duplicate data entry, and so much more.
FormPiper will take an element of your retail business that should be a key part of any smart revenue-boosting strategy – consumer finance – and make it better all around. In this way, it will simplify your life as a business owner, make things easier for your team members, help you boost your revenue, and lay the groundwork for stronger customer relationships.
Explore all that FormPiper has to offer for your business and see how it can help you keep your retail resolution this year and in years to come.
