At the beginning of the year, everyone is usually excited and motivated to create new goals for their business. You push into the year with a positive mindset and are determined to check off your monthly objectives so that you reach your end of year goal.
As the year goes on, business owners can get pulled into so many directions that you can get side tracked. Monthly check-ins to make sure you’re on the correct track can go to the wayside.
We are now hitting the six month mark in 2020 and whether you have been on course with your goals each month or if you feel you have been side tracked, this is a perfect time to take stock of your goals for the year.
In this article, we are going to go through a 3 step process of how to assess your goals as well as identify approaches to enhance your business for the second half of the year so you can finish 2020 strong.
Outline Action Steps to Enhance Your Business
Once you have identified the areas that are not working well for your business, you can then distinguish ways to enhance your business for the last six months of the year.
Here are some recommendations for how to enhance your business:
1. Collaborate with other organizations:
Working with other organizations such as hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, community based organizations, housing facilities and faith based organizations can be an excellent way of receiving referrals for your business. Take a look at how much time you have spent in the last six months on cultivating relationships with key referrals sources in your areas.
- Have these key sources provided referrals?
- If they have, identify how you can work even closer with them.
- If they haven’t, identify if it is worth your time to nurture your relationship with them.
- If it is worth your time, identify ways you can more closely work with them.
- Can you schedule a live zoom lunch and learn for their organization?
- Can you support them in any of their initiatives they are working on?
- Are there specific staff that may not know you well or what your business can do for their clients?
- Is there an easier process for these organizations to refer to you?
- What is standing in the way of these organizations making you a top referral source?
Asking yourself these questions and finding new ways to work with referral sources can be a key way of enhancing your business.
2. Advertising:
Have you spent any funds on advertising your business in the last six months? If not, you may want to consider investing in brochures to provide to your referral sources as well as electronic version that you can send them. Make sure they are clearly stating what it is that you offer as well as the pain point that you are helping your clients to eliminate (example: caregiver overwhelm, healthcare navigation, home care set up, etc). It should also be time specific so that potential clients know approximate time frames to meet the goals. You should also end with how your client will feel after having worked with you. Here is an example:
Example:
- (Business Name), _____ will help you _______ (specific goal) in only ____ (# of days/weeks/months), which will take you from ____ (struggle), to ____ (benefit), all without ____ (pain point).
Social Media Marketing:
Social Media Marketing is also a great way to spread information about your business and help caregivers to find you. One mistake businesses make is choosing to be on every social media platform, which is not necessary. Pick one or two social media platforms to focus on. The information you should provide should be educational, inspirational and also include information on how to start the process of working with your business. The 80/20 rule is something good to follow. 80% of your content should focus on education, resources and overall inspiration while 20% should focus on your business specifically and have a clear call to action for readers to take with you (example: submit a form with questions, call for a free over the phone assessment, sign up for your newsletter, etc).
If you find this too overwhelming and time consuming, consider outsourcing your social media to a freelancer. You can post a job on Upwork.com and various freelancers will apply to your job and you can find the best person to work with your business.
3. Monitor Your Progress
Now that you have identified what has been working and what hasn’t been working as well as new ways to enhance your business for the last half of the year, you’ll want to come up with revised goals.
Goal setting doesn’t work if you only make a list. You have to check in with yourself often so make a monthly or bi-monthly calendar meeting for yourself to go over your progress and assess how well you’re doing.
After you make your goals, make sure to outline monthly tasks you need to do in order to make these goals happen. When you break goals into small action items, they become more realistic and help you to move forward.
Over the next month, you will see how you can check off your tasks and objectives and eventually reach your goals.
Let us know in the thread below what your goals and objectives are for the last half of the year!
Sources
Nia K. N. Jackson—Jopwell. (2017).Not Meeting Your Goals? Try This 4-Step Process
Retrieved from: https://www.fastcompany.com/90449448/how-big-companies-can-adopt-a-startup-mindset
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