January may be a great time to take stock of your personal life with the year ahead, but it’s also the perfect time to implement small changes and detox your work life, by reviewing your business plan. Where do you want your business to go and more importantly, how are you going to get there? 

It’s easy for a business to become sluggish and ungainly, for websites to begin looking outdated, processes to be worn out, messaging to be antiquated and for you to lose sight of where things can and should be improved.

Sophie Jillings, has worked with some of Australia’s biggest retailers to help them gain insight into how they can improve their business, reputation, sales and ultimately to become more nimble and agile. Here are her five simple steps of how retailers can detox their business and set it on the road to success in 2018.

Step 1: Set a date  

Change is always hard, we love what we know because it’s easy. Setting a date for a business review and planning session is the first step to detoxing your business this year. Get your management team together, have a list of what you’d like to achieve and be prepared to spend multiple days, if not an entire week thrashing out the details on how you’re going to update the outdated elements of your business. At its very core, you need to have a tangible business goal for the next 6 months to a year. What that goal is, is completely up to you, whether it’s hitting a certain turnover, expanding into a specific market, or even improving your customer service satisfaction score, you just need a target to get everyone on the same page. 

Step 2: Back to basics

Start with how your business is viewed, not only by your customers, but also by your employees. Does your logo or website need updating, and does it have all the relevant information? Does your business have a set of core values or messaging that spans the entire of your business with information on how your employees should behave and also how the public views you? If not, it’s time to get thinking about what makes your business tick and make sure everyone knows what you stand for.

Step 3: Learn and develop

Once you know what you want to achieve, and have a solid idea of what your business is going to look like in 2018, it’s time to delve into your businesses data and learn where and how you need to improve. At TruRating, we help retailers with a point of sale rating system, which is a crucial tool for learning where improvements can be made in the business. For example, those customers who were asked their name during the purchase process, spent 30% more on average than those who were not asked their name.^[1] This simple piece of data shows how making one small change in your business, can dramatically increase your bottom line.

Step 4: Make the change

Once you have established what data you wish to utilise,  drawin up your company’s values and have created a shiny new ‘face’ to the business, it’s time to put your detox plan into action. Don’t try and run before you can walk, your newly developed business strategies can be implemented gradually, a few at a time, to give you and your company time to get it right. Get the whole team on board, share your findings, and get them to share in your vision for the company’s future. With your business detox behind you, you can look forward to a successful 2018.

Visit www.trurating.com

^[1] TruRating Data