Top 10 New Year's Resolutions for Business 

Author -- Paul R. DiModica

With the holidays upon us and New Year's Eve just around the corner, it's that time of year when sales teams are assigned their company's new compensation plans, sales quotas and job responsibilities. It's the time of year when sales managers start looking to hire new salespeople and sales executives start looking for new jobs.

It's also that time of year when management teams huddle in the backroom, order pizza, strategize their corporate goals and develop new business concepts while simultaneously designing marketing materials to help them look like an industry player.

As the new year approaches, we all make New Year's resolutions that are both personal and professional. We might write on our magical list that we want to make more money, exercise more, get a better job or lose the extra pounds that have been hanging around the last few years.

Yet studies show that most people do not have a personal success plan or even a business plan (a sales plan is not a business plan), and that by April of each year, most people have failed to live up to their New Year's goals.

Will you be prepared to reach your goals?

Traditional New Year’s resolutions list include entries such as get out of debt, land a new job or be able to work from home, save more money, exercise, get organized, learn something new and reduce stress. At DigitalHatch, we work with CEOs and business executives to increase their professional and corporate business performance. To help our many subscribers of CxO Matters™ we have provided a list of the top ten recommended New Year's "business" resolutions modified from the traditional resolutions.
 
Follow them and you will be healthier, wealthier and wiser in 2008.

Are the following resolutions tough? You bet they are. Am I being too aggressive in my observations? Maybe. But these are New Year's resolutions. They are designed to make you reach for strategic and tactical goals that will make you more successful.

2008 is up to you!

Top 10 New Year's Resolutions for Business

1. Be a better leader.  As the CEO or President of my company, I will not let ego drive my business decisions. Instead, I will substitute business logic, research and input from others.
2. Base my business decisions on research.  As the CEO or President, I will not define my team's annual sales quota or target assignments in the backroom.  Instead, I will calculate goals based on a mathematical sales capture model that also looks at market opportunity size by territory.
3. Invest in my business.  As the CEO or President of my company, I will invest in outside sales training, marketing and strategy advisement for my company, because I really don't know everything and without increased revenue capture . . . we don't need our other departments.
4. Accept accountability.  As a salesperson, I will not blame marketing, the services group, operations/engineering, or my boss when I do not hit my assigned sales quota. Instead, I will be a mature salesperson and accept that it is my responsibility to be successful within the corporate environment in which I operate.
5. Learn something new.  As a salesperson, I will finally admit that I don't know everything and will actually try to learn some new sales methods, strategies and techniques to increase my success.
6. Invest in myself.  As a salesperson, I will stop being cheap and accept that since sales is my chosen career, I will invest my own money in career training to become more successful (at least 1% of my gross income a year).
7. Make more money.  As a salesperson, even though I hate to cold call, I will cold call at least 40 new prospects a week, every week -- because cold calling is still one of the best ways to hunt for new business and make more money.
8. Be more productive.  As a marketing department manager, I will focus on generating qualified inbound leads for my sales team first, work on branding second and create brochures third.
9. Reduce stress.  As a sales management executive, I will not manage my team by emotions. Instead, I will manage my sales team by business metrics that are realistic and can be documented.
10. Help others.  As a manager of operations, engineering or corporate services delivery, I will stop blaming the sales department for client engagement problems and start working with them to deliver what we said we could do.

One Extra New Year's Resolution

To work at what I like doing -- not just what I have to do.

"Remember, revenue capture is not solely the salesperson's responsibility -- it's the company's responsibility." Paul DiModica

Editor: Suzie DeBusk, President
CxO Value Partners, Inc. -- Business Performance Improvement Specialists
Certified Partner of the Value Forward™ Network
(321) 394-3377

http://www.cxovaluepartners.com