New Year’s resolutions are about becoming the best version of yourself; basically, the new you that’s better, stronger, and more confident than before. But for wholesalers like yourself, goals are also about making yourself profitable and sustainable – something you can keep striving towards for years to come.
Now that the year is almost over, it’s time to start thinking about your New Year’s Resolution. So ask yourself: what can I do to make next year the best year for my business? What strategies will help me get back on track or further expand my company the following year?
If you’re looking to start fresh, there are several things that you should set out to achieve in the first few months of the new year. In this article, we listed the top 5 things you shouldn’t miss if you want to start the year strong. Let’s get into it!
What Went Wrong This Year?
First and foremost, let’s talk about the things you want to improve in your wholesale store.
Worried about keeping track of inventory? Don’t know how to price? Can’t retain wholesale leads?
It’s important to narrow down your challenges and first understand what went wrong the year before. This can help you come up with a proper plan of action next year.
For instance, if you’re having difficulty managing inventory, hit the ground running this new year by investing in software that automates every stage of your workflow. Our Wholesale Suite bundle, for example, streamlines all aspects of your business, making it easy for you to:
- Keep tabs on products without drowning in a sea of documents and spreadsheets.
- Stop juggling spreadsheets, invoices, and shipping labels.
Hitting the same roadblocks again and again is normal when you have so many responsibilities. However, there’s no excuse for not being prepared for the new year. Because of this, make a list of everything you want to get better at in the next 12 months before jumping in and writing down your New Year’s Resolutions.
Top 5 New Year’s Resolutions For Wholesalers
No matter how much you love your product, there’s always room for improvement. The more you learn, the better you get. And that applies to your business as well as your personal life.
So, in this section, we’ll help you set a resolution for your business that will help it grow and expand while being profitable and stress-free at the same time:
1. Understand the market better
Your customers, suppliers, and competitors are just a few examples of the people who make up your market. Nevertheless, these three key figures largely determine the success of your company.
Obviously, the people who purchase from your company are your customers. It will be easier for you to transform your product into one that will appeal to your target market if you are aware of what they like, how much they will pay, what they appreciate, and what they need.
This new year, make sure to ask your customers for feedback at every stage as you create your company, product, or service. This will help you narrow down your growth potential and also determine what kind of development needs to take place in your store moving forward.
2. Automate everything
When we say everything, we mean everything.
E-commerce is a dynamic industry. If you want to be successful in this space, you have to master the art of technology and use every bit of it to your advantage. For instance, if you’re still manually tracking your inventory on a spreadsheet, now is the perfect time to use an inventory management system.
On the other hand, if you haven’t yet established your wholesale management solution yet, you should begin looking into your possibilities this new year. In addition to speeding up your operations, doing this will make managing a wholesale store much simpler for you.
3. Streamline the ordering process
For businesses that sell to other businesses (B2B), developing an online ordering system is crucial. After all, you should give customers a method for placing purchases without having to repeatedly call or email you. This is true whether you work through wholesalers, distributors, or other businesses directly.
An online ordering process or order form streamlines the procedure and increases the productivity of your store, not to mention it makes a good impression on potential clients.
If you’re looking for a reliable and efficient tool that will help you kickstart your wholesale order form, check out Wholesale Suite’s Order Form Plugin. This helps you decrease frustration and increase order size by giving you full customization control over your wholesale catalog.
4. Speed up the shipping process
It’s time to deliver items more effectively now that ordering has been made simpler.
Shoppers claim that 62% of their decisions are influenced by delivery times. Currently, 90% of consumers consider shipping lasting 2 to 3 days to be the standard delivery promise. Anything slower falls short of consumer expectations.
Amazon helped make quick and (usually) free shipping mainstream. Today, the majority of online shoppers want their items to arrive as soon as possible – the quicker, the better.
This new year, if you want to keep up with the pressure and competition in the market, it’s vital that you ship out orders faster than you did the previous. This could entail identifying more effective carriers, expediting the order processing procedure, and introducing new shipping origins.
5. Build or grow your network
You’ve done major improvements in your wholesale store. Now it’s time to generate more sales.
That shouldn’t be too hard, right? After all, you’ve done your market research, enhanced your order management and delivery process, and are now completely prepared to sell…
But what about the people you need to sell to?
Every wholesaler understands the value of creating a strong consumer network that will regularly free up your shelves. Additionally, even though you’ll always be looking for fresh and cutting-edge products that will attract new customers, it might be difficult to stand out from the clamor of thousands of other vendors without a loyal consumer base.
It’s not an impossible task, though; if it were, nobody would ever make a sale. By learning how to build a pipeline for leads as well as track and manage those leads, you can help yourself get your product in front of merchants and ultimately into the hands of customers.
If you’ve yet to build your own lead-capturing system, the best way to get started is our Lead Capture plugin. This takes the pain out of manually recruiting & registering wholesale customers by giving you access to the following features:
- Fully customizable registration form builder
- Complete user approvals system
- Automated email sequence
- Automatic setup (+ free default email templates)
- And many more!
Conclusion
You’re about to enter the start of the year, which means that it’s time to look ahead and plan for the next 12 months. You may be the owner of a wholesale store with a long list of improvements you’d like to make but no idea where to begin. Or maybe you simply have a general desire to expand your business?
In any case, we’re here to help! In this article, we listed 5 new year’s resolutions tailored fit for WooCommerce wholesalers that you can add to your list:
- Understand the market better
- Automate everything
- Streamline the ordering process
- Speed up the shipping process
- Build or grow your network
Do you have any questions about wholesaling or improving your wholesale store in the coming year? Let us know in the comment box down below or send us a message!
We are using Wholesale Suit for WooCommerce clients. Love it!
Awesome Jan, glad to have you (and your clients) on board!
Incredible.
I am starting to work with Wholesale Suite and this blog will be a source of inspiration
Glad to have you on board Miguel!