As we move into a new year, you may well have been thinking of ways of improving your business. You might have decided that you want more customers, for instance. My question to you would be, “How many?” If you in turn say “I don’t know”, then you’ve got a problem.

You can’t hit a target unless you have a target to aim for!

Just saying you want more customers won’t work because it has no real meaning without an actual number attached to it. You need to decide instead that you want, say, twenty new customers in the next twelve months.

All of a sudden you have something tangible to work with and aim for. If you know you want twenty new customers in the next twelve months then you can start putting a suitable marketing campaign together to achieve just that. You will feel an amazing sense of achievement as you hit five, ten, fifteen new customers and eventually your magic figure of twenty.

Of course it is not just customer numbers that you need a target for. What about visitors to your website? When will you consider your business to be profitable? How many customer referrals do you need?

Start putting numbers on these things and you get feasible targets that can be worked towards. Make 2020 the year you replace general wishes with cold hard figures and numbers.