It’s no secret that December is the busiest month in the retail industry, as people shop for Christmas presents as well as other products and services for the festive season. If you’re in a different industry, you may find that business is slow at this time of year. In this case, you’re lucky, because this gives you an opportunity to review your activities and achievements over the past year.
If you have a formal business plan, hopefully you have been following it throughout the year, but if it’s just been sitting in a file or on a shelf somewhere, take it out and dust it off. Even if you started the year with a few resolutions or goals just scribbled on a piece of paper, try and find them, or at least try to remember what they were. Because each business and each individual is unique, there is no single standard of measurement of success, and the only way to assess your accomplishments during the year is to look at where you are now in comparison with where you had aspired to be at this time.
Even if you didn’t make any specific goals for the year, you can ask yourself the following questions.
What have I achieved this year?
Did you reach or surpass your goals? Did you accomplish something you didn’t expect?
What worked well?
Who were your most profitable customers? How did they find you – or how did you find them? This information will help you determine where to focus your marketing efforts.
What didn’t work? What can be improved?
If you fell short of your goals in certain areas, see if you can determine why. Was the goal unrealistic? Were there unforeseen circumstances? What would have had to be different for things to have gone the way you planned?
What do I want to achieve by the end of next year?
What is important to you? More clients? More income? Exploring new opportunities? More free time?
If you’re a long range thinker, this exercise may be easy, but even if you’re not, I strongly encourage you to take a pen and paper and write down your thoughts. According to the Law of Attraction, the simple act of writing down your goals actually sets things in motion. As evidence of this, while preparing to write this article, I found some notes I’d written about what I was looking forward to this year, and although I haven’t consciously been trying to make all of those things happen, I was thrilled to see that most of them have come about.
What do I need to help me reach my goals for next year?
Do you have the skills and resources you need? Should you take any courses or read particular books? Would it help you to work with a business, career, or life coach?
It’s important that you set aside time in your schedule for activities that will bring you closer to reaching your goals. Would partnering with a virtual assistant free up time for you to do so?
Although this article has mainly discussed business goals, the same principles apply to your personal life.
By taking time to do this review before the end of the year, you will arm yourself with a plan and the motivation to carry it through, and increase your potential for success in the new year.
Tags: goal setting, planning, self-assessment