11 New Year’s resolutions to build sustainable business success

Meet your business goals with these 11 New Year's resolutions for natural manufacturers and retailers.

As you begin to develop your business strategy for the next year, it's wise to first reflect on the prior year: Did you achieve all your business objectives? Did you reach your goals? What would you have done differently given the opportunity?  Did your actual results match the goals/projections you set? These are all important questions you need to answer!

This is the first place to start when developing your business strategy. Next, look at the goals themselves. Were your previous goals reasonable and achievable?  Don’t set goals that are out of your reach. For example, if you grew sales 5% last year, don’t set a goal of 25% next year.

Your goals should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. Resolutions are similar to goals.  They encourage and motivate us to achieve. Set your business goals at least six to twelve months ahead on the calendar in order to give yourself time to achieve them.

This year, resolve to:

1. Know the retailers you serve
Understand their competition and the challenges they face. Work to help them remain competitive.

2. Become a trusted, value-added resource for your retail partners
Become a category leader. Apply your passion to developing the best strategies to grow the category at retail. Your sales will increase as the category grows and the retailer will reward the support you give them.

3. Know your customers and your competitor’s customers intimately
Use this valuable information to develop a loyalty program that differentiates your brand and attracts new customers.

4. Know your competition
Become an expert on all of your competitors. The better you know them, the better you'll be able to compete.

5. Know your competitor’s strategies
Adopt strategies that make sense and improve on them— make them your own. Understand the strategies used by leading brands in other categories also. This is the shortest path to growing sales.

6. Know your competitor’s promotional strategies
Know the depth and frequency with which your competition promotes their products. Their strategies may be different in each channel. Develop a strategy that will grow profitable sales and attract their customers.

7. Commit to a loyalty strategy
Don’t talk at your loyal shoppers, speak to them directly. Engage your customers and get them talking about your product. Keeping the conversation going is the easiest way to develop a loyal following. Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook can accomplish as much if not more than some retailers targeted-loyalty programs.

8. Lower your cost-of-goods-sold
Develop strategies to improve and optimize your internal efficiencies.  There are two ways to improve profits: increasing sales and reducing costs. Some businesses are so focused on the former that they overlook the latter. Both are equally important!

9. Commit to working smarter not harder
Develop an organizational strategy that keeps you on track and laser focused on your goals.  Have a system to validate your results and measure your progress at regular intervals. A scorecard is a great tool to help you work smarter and accomplish more.

10. Be excellent in everything you do
Don't allow yourself to make excuses. Commit to being the best at what you do and sales will follow.

11. Commit your entire team to meeting these goals
Engaging your entire team will dramatically increase your success!  Hold yourself and your team accountable for the goals you set.

Brands that effectively plan and then work toward achieving their common goals gain a significant and sustainable competitive advantage!