January is the month for new starts and people often think about the changes they hope and need to make professionally. If you find yourself thinking about the best way to reengineer your business, division, department, team, or even your own personal professional brand to bring new clients and opportunities in the door, now is a good time to consider a few strategies that will allow you to hit the ground running at the start of 2019.
• Listen to a Customized and Invested Focus Group – Gather a group of your best internal and external customers, prospective customers, coworkers, employees, and mentors. Ask them for ideas about how to revamp the brand. Ask for ideas that require little or no budget. It can be a nice surprise to hear ideas that are small to implement and garner a huge improvement.
• Increase the Focus – Once you have a slew of new ideas, focus in on what will result in savings for your customers (internal OR external) or provide the best value to them, and what might bring in new customers. That’s all you want to concentrate on.
• Add Extras – Look at how you can include ‘extras’ that benefit customers and will bring more old and new clients to your door/website/portal. How about a newsletter, a discount for quantity or a free initial consultation/assessment?
• Pair Up – Can you make your brand compatible with another product or service? Could you reduce the usual time frame if clients are rushed or have a shortened lead time? Make it easy for customers to use you.
• Revamp Your Customer Base – A wider customer base can make up for a sluggish market or the need to create new products or services. Are there potential clients out in the marketplace that might use your service/product if you just tweaked your marketing pitch a little bit?
Everyone should review and revamp from time to time no matter how perfect or well entrenched the brand, product, or service may be. Giving some though to it at the start of the year can energize the first quarter of 2019 and invigorate the cold winter months. Rather than waiting around, when spring arrives you can be actively getting a refreshed and renovated word out.
