What did you learn from last year?

By CleanPeers

Each year millions of small business owners kick off their new marketing campaigns, close the old books while opening new ones, re-designing websites, employee training programs and so on.

How much of these changes are based on what you learned last year? Did you analyze your expenditures? How much you spent on office supplies, computer accessories, and new equipment purchases? How about getting competitive rates on your insurance? Were those cell phones bills a little high?

These are just some of the important questions all service business owners must be asking themselves before 2005 gets too far along. Planning for each upcoming year is crucial to your growth and stability but not taking the time to review the previous year could cause you to repeat unnecessary and sometime expensive mistakes.

A few good examples of costs that can be easily analyzed and further controlled by an observant operator include gasoline costs, vehicle maintenance costs, insurance for autos, business and health. You should also review your previous year’s equipment purchases as well. Buy any new pieces that you felt were vital at the time you needed them and now they are gathering dust somewhere? Maybe it’s time to unload them on Ebay and put the money where you will use it more frequently? I know of one contractor who can show you some really nice looking HOST machines that were used twice in 2004.

Business owners reading this article are all internet savvy to the degree that we recognize what a resource the net can be. It also means that we are far more likely to purchase the latest and greatest in PC toys and accessories say’s this writer while listening to his new PC SoundBlaster system and writing this at the same time. Do you really need the business card scanner that loads the card’s info into a program?

Taking the time to review the highs and lows of the previous year will help you to avoid them this year. Check your phone bills, how much you spent on advertising versus the amount of new business those ads generated. This is just one more hat a business owner must wear to maintain and insure the stability and success of their company. Examining every aspect of your business from where you buy the sponges to how that relates to the bottom line on a customer by customer basis is extremely important.