As each new year arrives, people in all walks of life will make New Year’s resolutions.

In the business world, many of us will resolve to pursue revenue growth in one way or another, and our hearts will tell us that this year we’ll succeed; our intentions will be good!

However, it is commonly said that the road to “you know where” is paved with these good intentions!

While we recognize the long-term importance of developing new business, it is very easy to spend our time responding to urgent demands and fire-fighting, often at the expense of allocating time to the oh-so-important process of developing new business...

If you’d like to take measures to avoid this oh-so-typical situation  that is, to avoid sacrificing the important in favor of the urgent, here are five ideas for keeping this year’s new business development resolutions alive and well:

1. Set both “result” and “activity” goals. Many of us will plan on increasing sales by X%, but fail to also set the activity goals that will generate the desired result. These may include making an extra number of sales contacts each day, attending a certain number of networking events each week or planning more customer retention meetings each month.
2. Schedule the activities identified in step #1. Research indicates that things entered into calendars are less likely to be “postponed” or procrastinated due to other demands on our time.
3. Keep score. Goal achievement will require documentation and consistent implementation.
4. Measure both progress and results; hold yourself and the team accountable for not only completing action steps, but also for assessing the effectiveness of each step. Make improvements or refine the approach as necessary; and be careful to avoid the usually-inaccurate conclusion that, “if the activities don’t produce the desired gains, then these activities are a waste of time!” Instead, if outcomes fall short, it’s better to reexamine execution.
5. Hold yourself personally accountable for steps 1 through 4; lead the way!