Here are the top five New Year's sayings or cliches:

• Out with the Old, In with the New
• New Year, New You
• Another Chance for Us to Get It Right
• See You Next Year
• A Frest Start

In reality, it is just another day in a sequence of days. The biggest difference is that it's colder, darker, and lazier than most days. Plus, most of us in business have the day off.

I will spare you all the personal resolutions that will be set and broken by the end of January.

Yet it marks a business milestone. It may be the start of a new fiscal year. It is when we have to start our annual taxes with W-2, 1099, and other IRS obligations. It's when we start to plan or execute how we will change our business.

Now, I don't want to become a Captain Buzzkill or minimize the significance of what the New Year may mean to you. We should all be proud that we survived to make another trip around the sun. We should enjoy all of those yearly retrospectives of what happened last year and revel in what lies ahead. After all, “Hope springs eternal.”

But one of my favorite cliches goes like this, “Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift… so be open to the present!'

Let's explore some old and new that we can embrace in the present as we look ahead.

Technology

Out With the New

The promise of AI differs depending on your needs and perspective.

One main use in marketing is writing content or generating ideas faster. It constantly does that, but what's missing is empathy.

Marketing and advertising are often tasked with casting a net to catch the attention of many potential customers. In the consumer business, this is by far the most cost-effective way. But wide nets tend to catch fish that you don't want or need.

It takes time to sort and remove them from the catch. Then, within the fish you did want to catch, some probably don't meet your criteria for sale. Some may be too small or defective, so you have to sort them out next.

You can use AI to segment and communicate based on the data available for your own data or what's available on the internet.

Better grouping and segmenting will help, but there is always a bell curve of interest, opportunity, and viability with a group.

In With the Old

We all need and want new clients, but not at the expense of current or past ones. AI can help segment and communicate with them as well, but I am suggesting that you add some manual processes.

Empathy includes the acts of communicating, listening, and interpreting. Empathy is strongest with individuals.

The internet causes artificial intimacy. You may think you know someone because of what they post and how they engage with other posts, but I can guarantee you that they will be different in a one-on-one situation.

So this year, try to resolve to have more and better one-on-one communications with current, past, and prospective customers. Try to meet in person. Zoom calls are better than nothing. Whichever you use or choose, communicating, listening, and interpreting with empathy will lead to better relationships and sales.

Relationships

Out With the New

Sticking with the consumer marketing tactics of the past, we tend to connect and try to influence larger audiences. It was in vogue to see people with 1000, 5000, or 30,000 followers or connections on Facebook and LinkedIn as influencers.

Tools that scrub the internet for lookalike audiences, prospects, and leaders give us a false sense of hope that these people will care about us and what we have to say or sell.

In reality, people will connect, follow, and stay connected because they lack the time or interest to clean up their lists and connections.

It's easier to continue to collect people who once had an interest because they may rekindle that interest and act.

In With the Old

I have mentioned the TRIBE concept before. People tend to have the mental capacity to maintain 150 quality relationships. It's deep within our lizard brains. So, I suggest that you prune your old ones as you continue to meet and add new relationships.

I have been on LinkedIn for 20 years (as of 2024). Over that time, I have amassed 5000+ connections. Who I was and what my business was 20 years ago vastly differ from what it is today.

This is one of the reasons I now add quality connections from LinkedIn to my CRM. I will add, tag, and review them in my CRM because this is how I maintain those one-on-one relationships I mentioned before. You can keep notes, retag, and remove them from your CRM and Linkedin when the time comes.

Nothing says that once a connection is removed, it can't be readded if it becomes relevant again.

Back to the TRIBE concept. If you have a team of ten people and each maintains just 150 relationships, your business has an effective reach of 1500 people. That is more quality connections than most B2B businesses could ever hope for.

Closing Thought – Habits

In business, I have built habits that mix old and new but help me focus on the present.

One of my new habits is that anyone I meet in person or online who has an interest in me and my business gets a connection request on LinkedIn. That includes vendors, prospects, and referral partners. Once they connect, they are added to my CRM and tagged with notes.

A few of my old daily habits include posting a positive quote and wishing my connections a, Happy Birthday. That birthday wish is a great time to review your connections.

Both Facebook and LinkedIn alert you to (or you can find) people's birthdays. As you wish them a happy birthday, click on their profile and see who they are and who they work for. You can choose to stay connected if they are still relevant or remove the connection if they are not.

It's up to you to find a system that works for you, your schedule, and your needs. If you commit to small daily steps, it makes it easier to manage your relationships in more meaningful and empathetic ways over time.

“An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves”.
– Bill Vaughan

Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas, or questions about business-to-business sales and marketing today! Do you have a sales or marketing communications strategy that works for you? What tips or techniques can you share that work for you and your business?

To learn more about this and other topics on B2b Sales & Marketing, visit our podcast website at The Bacon Podcast.