The following goals are the most popular resolutions:[3][4]
- Improve physical well-being: eat healthy food, lose weight, exercise more, eat better, drink less alcohol, quit smoking, stop biting nails, get rid of old bad habits
- Improve mental well-being; think positive, laugh more often, enjoy life
- Improve finances: get out of debt, save money, make small investments
- Improve career: perform better at current job, get a better job, establish own business
- Improve education: improve grades, get a better education, learn something new (such as a foreign language or music), study often, read more books, improve talents
- Improve self: become more organized, reduce stress, be less grumpy, manage time, be more independent, perhaps watch less television, play fewer sitting-down video games
- Take a trip
- Volunteer to help others, practice life skills, use civic virtue, give to charity, volunteer to work part-time in a charity organization (NGO)
- Get along better with people, improve social skills, enhance social intelligence
- Make new friends
- Spend quality time with family members
- Settle down, get engaged/get married, have kids
- Try foreign foods, discovering new cultures
- Pray more, be closer to God, be more spiritual
According to survey conducted by LA Fitness asked 2,000 people what their aims for 2013, the top ten are [5]:
- Read more books
- Save more money
- Lose weight
- Redecorate
- Take better photos
- Go travelling
- Sell old unwanted stuff on eBay
- Buy a tablet
- Organise photos
- Do something for charity
How about the top ten resolutions for 2014? The following New Year's resolution statistics were taken from survey findings by University of Scranton at Journal of Clinical Psychology [6]:
- Lose Weight
- Getting Organized
- Spend Less, Save More
- Enjoy Life to the Fullest
- Staying Fit and Healthy
- Learn Something Exciting
- Quit Smoking
- Help Others in Their Dreams
- Fall in Love
- Spend More Time with Family
However, the aforementioned New Year's resolutions are addressed to the personal goals. Silicon Edinburgh is a small local business company that specialising in computers and repairs. Therefore, our New Year's resolutions should be more related to the business oriented. Since the etymology of "business" stems from the state of being busy, and implies commercially viable and profitable work, business also can be defined as activities to provide goods and services to customers for profit [7]. We are aware that a good business means a decent profit with happy customers. In order to find out about the best New Year's resolutions for our business, we need to answer the 4 questions [8] from Marc Compeau (a contributing author for Forbes.com). Well, we will not answer those questions here, nevertheless, we will paraphrase the information related to those questions.
- Do you gather more data than you can currently use? Information is a power! The information about the market trending, competitors, customers, etc. help the business owner to make decisions that will have an impact on the firm’s performance in the months ahead. The more information you have got, the better decision you will make.
- Do you have a customer retention goal that is consistently measured? It is important to track repeat customer activity. If you set some internal goals that you monitor, the goal will lead to increased attention on key customer segments, repeat customers spend more and are less expensive to service, make them a 2014 focus.
- Do you know who your top 3 demographics are and how those key groups make decisions? Customers are fickle, they change their minds based on various inputs. If you are able to spot the customers' trend in making decision. You can take advantage of the trend. More importantly, you also have to be able to spot the next change in your customer’s decision-making process.
- Do you consistently engage in personal conversations with key demographics, checking on how your business is viewed? It is important to establish customer loyalty so that you can increase cash flow, decrease marketing costs, can increase margins and take advantage of word of mouth. Forget about rewards cards, look at Apple, Zappos and Southwest Airlines LUV, famously loyal customer bases without a customer loyalty program – just amazing customer service. Moreover, giving discount will encourage customer to be loyal to the discount program rather than to the brand. Thus, you will start making loss instead of profit. Instead of trying a “buy 10 get 1 free” ask a few customers what’s working and what’s not, and fix what’s broken immediately.
After considering some inputs and answering 4 questions above, we have decided to make three New Year's Resolutions throughout 2014.
1. To be more proactive in gathering information or feedback from our customers
2. Improve our customer services especially in the repairs and custom builds
3. To be more informative to the customers not only through direct sales but also online media
References:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Year_Resolution
[2] Lennox, Doug (2007). Now You Know Big Book of Answers. Toronto: Dundurn. p. 250. ISBN 1-55002-741-7.
[3] http://www.usa.gov/Citizen/Topics/New_Years_Resolutions.shtml
[4] http://www.43things.com/resolutions/trends
[5] http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/fun/news/a448025/top-40-most-popular-new-years-resolutions-for-2013-revealed.html#ixzz2pFEIvPYM
[6] http://www.statisticbrain.com/new-years-resolution-statistics/
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business
[8] http://www.forbes.com/sites/marccompeau/2013/12/31/the-only-new-years-resolution-for-small-business/
