How to Ensure 2019 is The Best Year Ever For Your Company

We just got home from Kiawah Island in South Carolina. We love it there. The sun was shining, and the weather was great. On New Year’s Day, we ran a 5K immediately followed by an Atlantic Ocean Polar Bear Plunge.

However, this was the first year in a while that both Christmas and New Years day fell on a Tuesday. For the first time in years, I took two weeks off of writing the Tuesday Tidbit?, and it felt great.

But boy, I’ve missed you guys.

So here we are, eight days in 2019 and things are happening. Yesterday was a busy day, we had many calls about Evergreen Experiences, and I’m talking to many loyal Tidbit readers about how we might work together this year.

And now we return to our regularly scheduled programming.

To kick off the New Year, I want to share a favorite, straightforward strategy that will dramatically improve your chances of achieving your business objectives this year.

And that’s as good a place as ever to start. Your business objectives for 2019. Have you defined your key objectives for the year?

For example: 

• You might be looking to dramatically increase revenue.
• You might want to to create stronger, more valuable customer relationships, and to maximize customer value. 
• You might be looking to plug the holes in the bucket and your processes costing you money. 

Whatever your key objectives might be, this simple strategy might help you.

Here are three simple steps to help you hit your goals in 2019.

The first step is to identify what is important to you or your company over the next 12 months…

The second step is to look back, over the past 12 months with a critical and objective eye. Don’t just pat yourself on the back. Give yourself an honest assessment of how you did, and why you didn’t reach the goals that you missed.

The third step is to take action and create specific plans. You need to create a realistic action plan to ensure you work towards what you want to achieve over the next 12 months, paying particular attention to the assessment of your efforts from the previous steps.

Finally, you need to get really specific.

For example, if you say you need to improve customer service next year, what steps are required to make that a reality? 

What got in the way of it happening this year? 

What are you going to give up, or do differently, to make it a success this year?

What does it mean to have improved customer service? 

How will you measure it? 

In March, how can you tell if you’re meeting your goal?

What specific things are you going to do? 

Is it something you’re going to do daily (like outreach to existing clients), or something that happens in response to an outside event (No more than 90 seconds of hold time for clients on the phone)?

Don’t be lazy with your goal setting, and don’t be lazy in measuring and monitoring them throughout the year. 

If it’s important enough to strive for, it’s important enough to plan for.

Your challenge for this week: Drop me a message and tell me your company’s single most significant goal for 2019; 

Why you think it’s the most important thing you can do;

What challenges you see in achieving it, and what steps you’re taking to make it a reality.

I’ll promise to respond with some thoughts of my own that might be helpful

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Noah is the author of the landmark books, Evergreen, The Customer Loyalty Loop, and the recently released Dealing with Difficult Customers. The books break new ground on customer loyalty, customer service, customer experience, and customer retention. Since 2005, Noah’s firm, Fleming Consulting & Co., has worked with clients around the globe to help them dramatically grow their businesses. Learn more about Noah here. Noah is also a LinkedIn Learning Instructor–view his courses here.