It’s a brand-new year. Have you made any New Year’s resolutions for your business yet? Granted, making resolutions is a cliché annual ritual. Nevertheless, it’s important to start every year with fresh financial perspectives and ambitions. In the spirit of new beginnings, now is the time to seek lucrative new business opportunities or make fiscal changes to bolster growth.

According to a recent survey, 66% of Americans plan on making financial New Year’s resolutions for 2023 — from paying off debt and reaching various financial milestones to increasing personal income. You can do the same too for your company. To help you get started, here are five New Year’s resolutions for improving your business’s financial posture:

Define your financial goals

What do you wish for your company to achieve in the coming fiscal year? A financial plan begins with setting financial goals that put targets in front of your business strategies. In other words, financial goals help you make success-focused business decisions.

Common business financial goals include:

• Increasing profits
• Expanding investment portfolios
• Reducing business expenses
• Improving cash flow
• Optimizing productivity and ROI

While there’s no limit to financial ambition, each goal must pass a reality check. First, evaluate your current financial standing and the business’s capacity for financial growth. Second, outline specific goals or milestones you can confidently attain within the year. Finally, develop an action plan to reach those goals based on the resources available and the company's mission. Keep in mind that the goals may need revising as the year progresses to adjust for any business or financial developments along the way.

Get a firm handle on your finances

Did you know that 82% of small and medium-sized businesses fail due to cash flow mismanagement? Proper financial management is a vital entrepreneurial skill and a key pillar in every business, whether big or small.

Managing finances means understanding revenue and expenditure, forecasting cash flow, and planning business activities based on lessons learned from the past, currently available resources, and future projections. It goes well beyond bookkeeping to making informed business decisions driven by critical financial analysis.

Business financial management is not always a straightforward activity. It often involves a lot of moving parts and inter-departmental collaborations. Managing finances can get complicated and overwhelming, depending on the company's size and enterprise. But here are some handy management tips for financial success throughout the new year:

• Follow accounting best practices.
• Optimize your pricing and billing strategies.
• Mind your expenditures and ROI.
• Adopt digital financial management and analytics systems.
• Monitor business progress against financial goals and expectations.
• Consider hiring a dedicated financial manager or signing a CFO-as-a-Service provider.

Keep your customers clo

B2B companies rely heavily on repeat business to drive sales. Unlike the B2C market, where there is a much larger pool of potential customers, B2B sellers earn their clients through deep and continued engagements. Building a business-sustaining client base takes considerable time and effort, which is why it's worth nurturing.

Customer loyalty enables you to build long-term relationships with your clients, leading to more sales and engagement opportunities. Additionally, a loyal clientele will likely promote your brand through referrals or word-of-mouth marketing. According to Invesp, existing customers can account for up to 70% of sales volume. Meanwhile, existing customers spend 31% more than new customers and are 50% more likely to try out your new offerings. Plus, it’s cheaper and more profitable to retain a customer than to acquire one.

It's clear why you should make customer retention part of your financial New Year’s resolutions. The way to do it is by developing a B2B customer loyalty program that stimulates engagements through meaningful incentives, generous rewards, value-driven offerings, and win-win partnerships.

Invest in emerging growth and earning opportunities

One key quality that sets successful entrepreneurs apart is their ability to quickly recognize and respond to new business opportunities. This forms the core of business agility, a crucial driver for business growth and survival.

A business opportunity could be anything from a new cultural trend, an emerging technology, a disruptive change in your industry, a growing underserved market, to an underutilized resource.

Make 2023 the year to hunt for new earning and investment opportunities. Consider your company's position in the market/industry, the resources at your disposal, and the possibilities of generating new income streams or expanding your investment portfolio. For instance, you can develop lucrative new offerings from your customers' pain points or gaps in the market. It's all about being open-minded and opportunistic.

Let your money work for you

That’s right, let your money work for you in 2023. This essentially means using money to make more money without necessarily investing in a venture or purchasing anything. It sounds too good to be true, but many companies have been doing it for years.

As a B2B company, you're perfectly positioned to solve one of your customers' biggest paint points — funding. Many entrepreneurs struggle to acquire enough capital to start, run, and grow their small or medium-sized businesses. Only 48% of small businesses in the U.S. have their financing needs met, while 38% of startups fail due to a lack of capital.

This funding gap is largely due to the fact that many SMBs are not “creditworthy,” at least in the traditional sense, in the eyes of banks and other big lenders. And that, right there, is one of those earning opportunities we've just discussed. Embedded lending is the newest gold rush in the B2B space. Funding your business customers not only earns you extra revenue but also cements customer loyalty and helps bridge the gap between capital and financially underserved entrepreneurs. Talk about crossing off multiple financial New Year’s resolutions in one move.

Become a B2B lender with Loanspark

Embedded funding requires careful planning, diligence, and financial wits. The ultimate goal is to design SMB funding options that truly bring value to your customers and your business. It's a delicate balancing act between value and risk. You'll also need a digital platform to host, distribute, and track the funding products. All this costs money, defeating the “let your money work for you” idea.

That’s where Loanspark comes in. To become a lender, you don't have to spend a fortune on expensive talent or digital systems. Loanspark provides the financial expertise and technology to develop, host, and run ideal funding programs for your customers. We work with all kinds of B2B businesses through customizable partnerships, where they can leverage our Business-Lending-as-a-Service (BLaaS), lending Marketplace-as-a-Service, referral programs, and more.

Loanspark makes you a value-added B2B lender in as little as 14 days, with the unlimited freedom to brand and market the funding products under your company’s name.

Our goal is to eliminate the barrier to entry in the SMB funding market for both financial and non-financial companies. Subsequently, we hope to bring much-needed business funding within reach of entrepreneurs while ensuring that embedded players profit from lending too.

Let’s work embedded lending into your financial New Year’s resolutions for 2023. We’re only a call away.