The new year is upon us and many people will make resolutions to stop smoking or lose weight. Entrepreneurs often have different resolutions, however — they have revenue projections they want to hit and new product lines to develop. They want more contact with existing customers or to venture out into uncharted territory for their industries.
To find out what goes through an entrepreneur’s mind at this time of the year, we reached out to five local business owners to learn about their 2017 goals. Their businesses are in different stages of growth, but they all had one thing in common: passion to make their goals reality.
Courtney Sparkman, OfficerReports.com
Sparkman says he wants to get out into the market and see more of his customers. “Previously our sales funnel has been wide, but not deep,” he says. “We’ve had most of our contact over the phone or online. We’ve identified some customers at $100 million organizations who only have one or two licenses for our product. They could definitely be served better with more licenses. This year will be more tactical. We need to travel and shake hands and help our customers optimize their use of OfficerReports.”
Sparkman also says he wants to increase his thought leadership by publishing his second e-book in 2017. “With our first one, the reception was great. It was essentially a compilation of our best blog posts, but tied together in a meaningful way,” he says. “That one was sales-related. But we’re seeing now that our customers are more interested in operations and how to manage a security guard company. We’re going to publish something along those lines in the second quarter.”
Devin Lemoine, Success Labs
Lemoine says she wants to spend more time in 2017 working ON her business and not simply FOR her business.
It’s a case of “the cobbler’s children having no shoes,” she says. She is an executive and leadership coach who advises clients to be strategic in their business — but says she has had little time for that herself. The plan is for that to change in 2017. Lemoine wants to:
- Spend more regular time with her team, staying connected and coaching.
- Take the time to be strategic and focus on the big picture, planning and attacking the industries and niches that will help Success Labs grow.
- Spend more time with cool people and figure out how they can do business together.
- Have more fun doing the work.
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