12 year-end activities for your businesses

1. Call and/or email current and old customers and thank them for their business and offer them a special promotion.

2. Send out holiday greetings: electronic or snail mail, but make them high-quality ones.

3. Seek out new partners: bundle offerings with complementary products/service; cross-sell customer lists.

4. Thank employees: consider giving a turkey or a ham for a holiday meal; give out recognition awards for performance and service.

5. Contact suppliers and thank them for their performance and review payment terms.

6. Plan your community activities for 2011 to raise your local profile: even in today’s electronic age, the majority of business happens within a 70 miles radius.

7. Take webinars to enhance your knowledge of online marketing and eCommerce.

8. Straighten out your files: dump/destroy old files, put others in storage, start gathering tax information together.

9. Look at your systems in terms of your current and near-term needs: is it time to move to mobile devices, replace your land lines with cellular, and/or better integrate your systems?

10. Sit down with your advisors (accounting, legal, banking, insurance, etc.) to review and plan.

11. Review staffing and consider alternative scenarios like outsourcing, utilizing part-time workers (stay-at-home parents, students, seniors), and/or having virtual workers.

12. Look at new space: for a better location; to lower your rent or mortgage.