Best Ways to Start the New Year in Business!

The New Year is a great time for renewal and good intentions in your personal life as well as your business. Unfortunately, intentions do not always translate to actions! We did not want you to start 2016 with unrealized potential, so we put together three strategies to implement this year that will help your business reach the next level.

Trend Up
There’s a brand new economy that developed in 2015 called the “share economy.” The Internet, apps, and smartphone are the biggest factors enabling this new style of business. Airbnb, Uber, Sparefoot, and Lynda all have disrupted traditional business models and industries. The Titans in these industries are trying to push back: there’s always resistance to new and scary threats. Still, we are sure this trend is only going to continue in the coming years and ignoring it or resisting it would only be foolish.

You need to ask yourself, how will the sharing economy affect my industry and business? How can my business take advantage of this trend?

You should also be alert to other trends in your industry and stay ahead of the curve to take advantage of any new technologies and processes. If yours is a traditional brick-and-mortar business, Internet sales may have driven a dagger through your revenue. Maybe it’s time to consider e-commerce as a new revenue stream.

Check out the Competition
Competition can be a good thing. As long as there’s a healthy dose of it out there, you can use it as the motivation to make positive changes to your business. Study your competitors, figure out what marketing and business strategies they are using. This will help you identify niches that are not being targeted and determine how to differentiate your marketing strategies from the competition.

These are opportunities that your business should pounce on as soon as you can identify them because your competitors are also scanning the market and the window of opportunity will not last too long.

Review Your Overhead
In many ways, a business is like a living thing. You can keep feeding it, and it will keep growing. This is also true regarding your expenses and overhead. It only makes sense to review your indirect expenses every year. Figure out where the business is spending money and if there is a more cost-effective way to achieve the same results.

A simple example can be your phone line. Are you still operating your business via a landline? VoIP phone lines and systems used to be affordable only for large-scale business. Not only has the technology become more reliable in recent years, but it is also more affordable, well within reach of small businesses. Signing up with a VoIP service provider can help you save big on your telephone bill.

Go over your financial statements from the previous year and your budget for the coming year. Review your expenses line-by-line to find cost efficiencies. Call your insurance provider and ask him detailed questions about your insurance coverage. You might be able to discover savings that you didn’t even know existed.