Starting the New Year Strong in B2B Business

New year, new you – right? The start of a new year is a perfect time to recalibrate, reset, and reinvent. This applies not only to your personal life but to your business, too. As 2020 comes to a close, we’re given another chance at starting the new year strong. So, how exactly can you do that in B2B business?

Figure Out Where You Stand

Before you can change or improve upon anything, you need to know where you are as a business. Take inventory of the things you’ve done well this year. These are the areas you’ll obviously want to continue succeeding in during the coming year.

Just like there are areas where you’ve done well this year, there will be areas you’ve struggled. Take inventory of that, too! What are the areas of your business that you need to improve in 2021? Relationships with your accounts? Budgeting? Time management? You have to figure out where you’re struggling before you can fix it.

End the Current Year Strong

Simply put, if you want to start the new year strong, you need to end the current year strong. You set yourself up for success when you finish strong. It gives you a leg up on starting the new year. While this may look like strong numbers and data, you should also end strong relationally.

Invest time and effort into your business relationships as the year ends – both employees and accounts. Obviously, end-of-year parties won’t be able to look the same this year. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t still find ways to show appreciation for people. For many – businesses and employees alike – 2020 was a challenging year. As a business owner, it goes a long way when you acknowledge that. Appreciation for people that make your business a reality helps you head into the new year on the right foot.

Actively Prepare for the New Year

You won’t start the new year strong if you don’t prepare for it ahead of time. A successful year doesn’t just happen. You have to play your role in making it happen.

You can start by planning out your calendar year as much as possible. As we have seen this year, unexpected events hit and we can’t plan for everything. However, it’s better to have a plan and adjust as needed than to have no plan at all. Plan for a productive year by scheduling things like employee training, team building, and professional development. You’re more likely to do things when they’re on a schedule, so be sure to pick dates for the important things. 

Set SMART Goals for Starting the New Year Strong

Setting goals for a new year is not a foreign concept. People all around the world have been doing it for ages, and so have businesses. However, new year’s resolutions tend to fade away and be nonexistent by February. So how can you keep that from happening? Set SMART goals.

The concept of SMART goals is relatively well-known, and for good reason – they work. SMART is an acronym that stands for:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-based

It can be easy to set goals that are too broad or lofty. It can then be discouraging when those goals become hard to stick to or difficult to achieve. All of this can be avoided by being “smart” about your goal-setting. When you pick a new goal for your business for the near year, ask yourself the following questions:

• How specific is this goal? Is it too broad?
• How will we know when we’ve achieved this goal? How will we measure it?
• Is this a realistic goal? Is it challenging enough while still attainable?
• Is this goal appropriate for our business? Does data show that it’s a goal we should have?
• When will we need to accomplish this goal?

If you’ve asked all these questions, the result is a goal (or goals) that’s beneficial for your B2B business. A massive key to starting the new year strong in B2B business is setting goals, and now you know how. 

Regardless of how your 2020 went, the new year is a new chance to start strong in your business. Stuck trying to come up with SMART goals for the new year? Check out this blog post about Five B2B Trends to Watch in 2021.