With 2020 is in the books, it is time to look toward your future.
If your goal is to build a more valuable company in 2021, here are some New Year’s resolutions to consider:
1. Stop chasing revenue. A bigger company is not necessarily a more valuable one if the extra sales come from products and services that are too reliant on you to deliver them.
2. Start surveying your customers using the Net Promoter Score methodology. It’s a fast and easy way for your customers to give you feedback, and it’s predictive of your company’s growth in the future.
3. Sell less stuff to more people. The most valuable companies have a defendable niche of specialized services to many customers and are known for their narrow positioning which highlights their uniquely qualified skills.
4. Delegate products or services that depend on you. If you offer something that needs you to create, produce, and sell it, then you are sucking up your time and cash and are not contributing significantly to your business’s value. Remove yourself from the equation and delegate the promotion, pitch, and production to others who are more capable than you.
5. Collect more money upfront. Turn a negative cash flow cycle into a positive one and you boost your business’s value and lessen your stress load.
6. Create more recurring revenue. Predictable sales from recurring contracts mean less stress in the short term and a more valuable business over the long run. Take the time to follow up with existing clients before you spam the world with your latest demo reel.
7. Be different. Refine your marketing strategy to emphasize the point of differentiation that customers value. Be relentless in highlighting this advantage.
8. Find backup resources for your most critical work. Consider developing a larger pool of resources with small projects in order to establish a working relationship and diversify the sources of your most-difficult-to-find skills.
9. Teach them to fish. Answer every employee question of you with “What would you do if you owned the business?” Your goal should be to cultivate employees who think like owners so they can start answering their own questions without coming to you.
10.Create dependable systems and routines. Your most important processes need to be developed so everyone can understand them and then maintained through regular routines so your employees can do their work accurately and independently. This is most important in areas that give you visibility on company and client health like Finance, Production, and Sales.
Here’s to building a more valuable company in 2021!