March 5-10
OPERATIONS The year is gathering pace and those small operational adjustments you made in January should be starting to stick. Make a point of documenting best processes as they emerge as well as common errors to save employees time troubleshooting redundant problems in the future.
STRATEGY Set times to meet with your advisers — your lawyer, accountant, banker, consultants and especially if you haven’t done it yet, your tax pro. Review the state of the company and how it’s placed to benefit from the economy’s current strength, and take advantage of your changing tax obligations.
EDUCATION If you send staff to Global Pet Expo (starts March 21), ask them to each pick a course they particularly enjoy and plan to recreate it for the rest of your staff.
March 12-17
STAFF It’s time for your twice-yearly employee reviews. You’ll do them again in September.
MARKETING Start plotting a pet fashion show for summer along with the accompanying social media promotions.
TECHNOLOGY Do you offer free Wi-Fi in your business? Does the name of your network promote your services, as in “$10-a-night-pet-boarding”? If not, it really ought to.
March 19-24
MAINTENANCE Schedule a technician for a tune-up of your A/C. Yes, it’s probably still cool outside, but maintenance now will save you money come summer.
MARKETING Send a spring-themed promotional email highlighting your range of pet products and/or services.
SALES FLOOR Step outside your store and assess things through the windows. How do the visuals and displays look — and how is your staff interacting with customers? It’s amazing how much more you can observe without sound. Research suggests words account for only around 7 percent of communication. What kinds of things are your sales staff communicating with their body language?
March 26-31
GENERAL March is a good month to catch your breath. You’ve likely been working non-stop since the end-of-year holidays. Try to grab a long weekend to recharge.
ONLINE The dissolution of net neutrality introduced a lot of uncertainty for small business with regards to how their online operations might be affected. Visitors to your site won’t have much patience if pages don’t open quickly. Most shoppers will abandon a page if it doesn’t load within 5 seconds, but they start getting impatient at 2 seconds. Check your website’s download speeds at internetsupervision.com.
OPERATIONS Create an employee suggestion box but add a twist — they have just 30 days to suggest ideas to make your business and their working lives better.