Planning For The New Year By Reviewing The Last

The start of the new year is a great time to assess what is ahead as well as what you just accomplished – or lacked to, for that matter – in the previous year. Joining you in this should be your employees. To jump start this important review process, a few questions are outlined below to help engage your thoughts, provoke new ones and lead you towards accomplishing new goals in the year ahead.

1. What was the single biggest accomplishment for your retail store or wholesale business in the past year? This accomplishment does not have to be reflective of dollars, but instead it can represent opportunity, steps  taken or anything else you truly believe made the largest impact on your business. Make sure your employees have the unique opportunity to give their individual thoughts on this, as well.

2. What do you believe you failed to accomplish in the past year that you had hoped to? Again, make sure your employees can share their opinions here. Take the time to listen to their thoughts and together, you can evaluate both the strengths and weaknesses of your business in an effort to do better in the coming year.

3. What were the top selling items of your store or brand in the past year?Do you think  they will continue to trend as top sellers in the new year? Either way, did you anticipate they would be top sellers? If not, how did you react to their sales to provide proper inventory? How can you learn from this to do again in similar situations?

4. What items do you think may replace your top sellers from this past year? Are you prepared to chase any items that sell well from a financial perspective, or have you already eliminated wiggle room in your buying budget?  

5. Is your sales team at the level of performance you want them to be? What do they believe they can do to improve their sales and overall work for your business? What do you want them to do to improve? How will you communicate, educate and inspire them to be stronger performers?

6. What new marketing initiatives can you make to gain visibility for your store, your business, your website and your overall brand / store image? Are you prepared to take the extra steps to do this? What are these extra steps?

7. Did you reach your target market in the past year?Who is your target market? Do you believe your audience may have changed since you opened your store or business and if so, how can you react to accommodate that?

8. Are there new layers (new product, new branding, new marketing, etc.) to your business that you plan to add in the coming year? What are they? How will this impact your employees? You? Your time? Your budget? Make sure everyone necessary understands the process.

9. Do you have to give up anything to get ahead this year? What? Are you willing to make this sacrifice? Are you employees prepared? What do you each need to do to prepare for this?

10. What goals do you have for yourself and your business that need support from outside resources? Whether they are vendors, contractors, consultants, photographers or anyone else, make sure you have scheduled times to work with the necessary parties so that you aren’t left chasing them last minute.

Hopefully these questions can help engage you and your entire team to jumpstart the year ahead with excitement and energy to reach the goals you have set for your business. Make sure to take the time to really evaluate last year in an effort to do better this year. Learn from both your mistakes and successes and when necessary, learn from others. Retail continues to be tough, so it’s okay to not be able to do it alone. Work together and hopefully 2010 will be the year you plan for it to be – or better!