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Grow Like You Mean It

“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.”

Benjamin Franklin

For most small business owners, the day-to-day job duties that you have can be so overwhelming that you may think that you don’t have time to ponder, much less execute, the future success of your business. But, as some have pointed out, “failing to plan is planning to fail.”

Now that 2018 is here, it’s the perfect time to begin thinking about what kind of goals you want to achieve and a strategy to achieve them by the year’s end. Here are some suggestions to help you and your small business achieve growth in the new year.

grow

First, begin to leverage your customer base to understand how your business can improve. Your current customers are often the best tools you have to utilize as a growing business. Talk to them. Ask questions on how you can do better or offer a better product.

Secondly, it’s important to have a clear understanding what type of objectives are realistic so that you can start taking bite-sized steps to get there. If you make too much of a stretch goal, you may end up either using too many resources to achieve an unattainable target or get discouraged when you don’t meet it.

Lastly, it’s beneficial to think about what kind of resources are available to help you achieve your goals. Utilizing the support from other professionals in your community is paramount to the success of your growth strategy. At first, it may seem like a challenge, but using all available systems of support will increase the chances of obtaining your definition of success.

2016 Holiday Sales and Staffing Forecast

Things are looking up this holiday season based on the National Retail Federations (NRF) forecasting models.  Although global instability, weather and elections can have an impact on the economy, consumers are typically resilient and seem to be poised to spend more this year than in 2015.

holiday season, seasonality, staffing

According to a recent article, the NRF “expects sales in November and December, excluding autos, gas and restaurant sales, to increase a solid 3.6 percent to $655.8 billion significantly higher than the 10-year average of 2.5 percent and above the seven-year average of 3.4 percent since recovery began in 2009. Additionally, NRF is forecasting non-store sales to increase between 7 and 10 percent to as much as $117 billion.”

The article also points out that hiring for the season seems to be within the range of last year’s numbers.  “According to NRF, retailers are expected to hire between 640,000 and 690,000 seasonal workers this holiday season, in line with last year’s 675,300 new holiday positions.”

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE