I hope you’ve had a happy and restful festive break.

To start the year it’s traditional to make some resolutions, so here are five that could prove highly profitable – as well as easy to keep:

1. Share good advice

   Within your office, there'll be plenty of untapped expertise. So, how do you exploit it and turn it into an even more valuable asset?

   Think of an area you want to improve in, for example cross-selling. In the next week or so, consider investing an hour brainstorming this with your team. A good starting point could be for example, to find out what colleagues think are the best open questions to ask in order to discover a client’s additional insurance needs.
   
   

2. Keep it simple

   Now focus for a minute on some of the simple things you could do today to make your sales and marketing more effective. Here are nine ideas to start you off.
   
   

3. Be a bit more sociable

   With many of your buyers now using social media for research, it’s no surprise that an active social presence online is going to be highly beneficial.

   So try and invest a couple of hours a week on this. Use this time to reinforce your firm’s positioning as a friendly and established local business of experts who are keen to support and engage with clients. And best to focus your time and energy on the media that your customers are already using, such as LinkedIn and Twitter.
   
   

4. Get noticed

   Getting to the top of Google’s ranking has obvious benefits, but how do you get there?

   Google says that it gives its top page position to the website that has the most authority and relevance to your target audience when searching for specific information. This simple and clickable guide could help you to achieve this.
   
   

5. Support your local charity

   Businesses who give more, get more – so consider investing some time on how you can use your existing connections to boost your standing in the community.

   A good way to do this could be by donating to a local charity every time a customer refers you, or in some other way interacts with your marketing campaign.
   
   

So there’s your five resolutions, which hopefully will prove easy to keep. And as always, we’ll be doing whatever we can over the next twelve months to support you in your endeavors.

Good luck