Tips To Get Top Results From Your Marketing Plan
Why do seemingly great marketing plans fail to yield the desired results?
Well, one reason: Such plans don’t turn the ideas into reality because they’re not action-oriented. What counts is the scheduled specific footwork, and then tracking the results.
There’s a second reason, quality of execution, but more on that later.
Four action-oriented keys to success
Action key No. 1: Develop specific action items for each key piece of your plan with specific target dates to take action. In other words, if 12 big customers will largely solve your revenue issues, set a goal for each monthly interval. For example, write: “We will get one major client each month.”
Action key No. 2: List specific footwork to achieve your monthly goal of one new client. For example, write: “To get a major new client each month, we’ll have to look for new opportunities to network with our existing Centers of Influence and to create new Centers of Influence.”
If you belong to your local chamber of commerce or Rotary Club, ask your friendly chamber peers or Rotarians for two referrals: “What are the names of two people with your qualities who might need our product?” Then, while dropping the name of your friend, make the contact.
Consider other ways to enlarge your prospect list, and write something like this: “We will also get a list of business leads via…”
Action key No. 3: Benchmark your action items that can lead to the desired results. For example, write: “From our list of prospects, we will meet with three new prospects each week.”
It’s a numbers game, but rest assured referrals are usually the strongest leads – especially, if you use the right networking strategies.
So don’t worry about the results. Focus on taking steps. The results will take care of themselves.
Action key No. 4: Define your list of specific actions to meet your targets. For example, write: “I will telephone or visit 15 prospects a day asking for an appointment.”
Focus on making the contacts, but again, don’t worry about which doors will open. It might be a lost art, but here’s how and why to use cold-calling for higher sales. Here are eight tips for cold calling by e-mail and telephone.
Quality of execution
Despite all the hype about the benefits of social media, face time works best. If you have good branding, elevator pitch, and use the right sales steps, you will be successful.
Here’s more:
Branding: Here’s a checklist to build your brand on a budget.
Elevator pitch: Here are the top 11 tips for a great elevator pitch.
Sales Steps: Here are the seven steps to higher sales.
You might also want to review the eight best practices in small business marketing.
From the Coach’s Corner, here are two advertising resource links:
- What are the Secrets for Success from Advertising?
- Checklist for Branding, Selling Your Biz as Green
“A clear vision, backed by definite plans, gives you a tremendous feeling of confidence and personal power.”
-Brian Tracy
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Author Terry Corbell has written innumerable online business-enhancement articles, and is also a business-performance consultant and profit professional. Click here to see his management services. For a complimentary chat about your business situation or to schedule him as a speaker, consultant or author, please contact Terry.
Overview: Marketing Plan Essentials For Best Results
If you haven’t completed a strong marketing plan to complement your business plan, you’re missing some salient benefits.
An effective marketing plan generates revenue and alleviates uncertainty for your business.
In addition, a marketing plan provides you with tangible values:
- When employees are apprised of your marketing vision, you’ll benefit from more teamwork and employee loyalty. Provide them with an abridged copy of your marketing vision for growth.
- Development of a marketing plan means you are up-to-date on your company’s situation. You thoroughly know your company. You’re more aware of your dynamic marketplace.
- A malleable marketing plan is an action to-do list. At the minimum, it’s a roadmap to success in the coming year.
- When you get really good, you’ll think two to four years from now. Details won’t be forgotten. It keeps the focus on the long-term objectives.
So you need to begin with an executive summary. Keep in mind your preferred end results from the specific actions you’ll take. Include your resourceful ideas and voluminous research, but specificity in measurable plans is vital.
Your marketing plan needs four specifics:
- Situation analysis – a market analysis with customer data, segmentation, market needs analysis and market forecast; a SWOT analysis of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats; your brand’s personality; and competitive analysis.
- Strategy – including a mission statement, goals, branding, product positioning and pricing. In other words, remember the 4 Ps of marketing – product, price, place and promotion.
- Sales forecast – by product and market segment, sales channels, responsible departments and managers – all designed to be tracked.
- Investment budget – enough details about sales programs, management and strategies to track expenses each month.
You’ll need input from virtually everywhere in your firm – consider finance, human resources, manufacturing, and marketing. You’ll learn unforeseen insights on problems and opportunities.
It may be a bit hackneyed, but as part of your checklist in setting goals, consider the acronym, SMART:
- Specific – who, what, when, where, and how
- Measurable – determine how you’ll attain your goals
- Agreed upon – make sure there’s a consensus or agreement
- Realistic – Make certain you’re being pragmatic
- Target date – a feasible timeline is best
Marketing plans are also helpful for better time management — once you have determined the annual big picture for your goals — then determine the intermediate steps for each month.
Oh, and in this age, consider whether your business would benefit from branding and selling your business as green or how cause-related marketing can increase sales by double digits.
Again, even after you’ve written your marketing plan, remember you’re not done. You must be relentless in continuously monitoring your progress. Fine-tune your plan as needed. Figure out what’s wrong and what needs to be done to remedy any undesirable situation.
From the Coach’s Corner, for Internet resource links, consider: Why B2B marketers like content marketing; the 14 strategies to rock on Google; and the best practices to optimize your brand and manage your Web reputation.
“Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.”
-Dr. Peter Drucker
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Author Terry Corbell has written innumerable online business-enhancement articles, and is a business-performance consultant and profit professional. Click here to see his management services. For a complimentary chat about your business situation or to schedule him as a speaker, consultant or author, please contact Terry.
Overcoming Obstacles for Business Turnaround — 13 Steps
For a successful turnaround of financially troubled businesses, there are usually two obstacles to overcome. They include the ego of the business owner or CEO, and poor advice by the lawyers.
It’s difficult for a business owner or CEO to accept the need for a turnaround specialist. Most often, they’re in denial about the company’s prospects or they don’t believe an outside participant can come to their rescue with restructuring services.
As for many attorneys, in my experience, they have tunnel vision. Not to be gauche, but they only see what’s at the end of their noses. They’re more apt to insist on filing bankruptcy to protect assets because they don’t have the capacity to see the big picture.
While bankruptcy might appear to be a logical recourse to hold off creditors, that’s not always the appropriate course of action. A turnaround can succeed if it’s handled quickly and by giving the turnaround specialist complete autonomy. But that’s the hard part for turnaround consultants – dealing with the egos.
The easy part is knowing what to do. The advisor will need to improve the company’s cash position with a myriad of steps:
- Evaluate the company’s prospects and reasons for the demise – starting with the company’s culture and human capital, processes and products
- Develop the turnaround plan
- Launch implementation
- Change what’s needed in human resources – replace the key employees lacking character
- Teach new skills, core values and vision to staff
- Fix processes
- Improve the inventory and products
- Require the company’s customers to pay in cash when making a purchase
- Control the checkbook
- Prioritize on cash outlays
- Negotiate with unsecured creditors and lenders
- Sell certain capital assets, including facilities and leasing them back
- Measure sales and operational performance
When given complete autonomy combined with quick action, such turnaround specialists are successful and the need for bankruptcy is averted.
From the Coach’s Corner, here is more information on financial strategies:
- Step-by-Step Solutions for a Company Turnaround
- Management Strategies for a Successful Turnaround
- 8 Simple Strategies to Give You Pricing Power
“In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later.”
-Harold Geneen
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Author Terry Corbell has written innumerable online business-enhancement articles, and is a business-performance consultant and profit professional. Click here to see his management services. For a complimentary chat about your business situation or to schedule him as a speaker, consultant or author, please contact Terry.
19 Tips to Protect Your Core Assets from a Disaster
Wildfires and hurricanes, especially one of the most-devastating disasters in the nation’s history – Hurricane Katrina’s nightmarish assault on New Orleans – put us on notice how important it is to plan and recover from disasters.
But years later, have the nation’s businesses capitalized on those lessons?
You recall the news reports:
At wind speeds as high as 127 miles per hour, Katrina ripped into the U.S. Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005. The storm’s accompanying floodwaters overwhelmed the levees and flooded 80 percent of New Orleans. Thousands of schools, businesses and homes were devastated. More than 1,000 people died.
Life in New Orleans was thoroughly disrupted for businesses and families, alike.
Finally, there is good news for New Orleans school kids: School construction is flourishing. A public charter school, Langston Hughes Elementary, has now enrolled its first 400 students.
But it took four years to rebuild the first New Orleans school destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, and another four years to rebuild 22 other schools.
Commerce was severely affected in the aftermath of Katrina. So let’s learn from this. Point fingers of blame if you must at local, state or federal governments. Yes, early rescue efforts in the Gulf Coast appeared to be a disaster themselves.
A disaster plan must take into account several un-forecast factors. For example, seemingly lost in all the finger-pointing were questions regarding why at least a third of the first-responders walked off the job. Plus, strategic flood control plans were apparently made in 2001 to protect New Orleans, but were never implemented because they were grossly under-funded, according to a press account.
Four years before Katrina, Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D-La.) and flood control officials apparently requested about $500 million while Congress only appropriated $250 million.
It took a week after the disaster before the local and federal governments formally announced a plan to work together.
So apparently bureaucracy and politics have played a role. Because of the federal tax cuts early in the decade, which I’ve supported, it might be tempting to cut government some slack in the wake of Katrina. That is, if it weren’t for the chronic pork-spending that results in certain members of Congress getting re-elected and the nation’s budget mired deeper in red ink.
Typical management mistakes
Many of the bureaucratic actions and statements after Katrina are reminiscent of five typical excuses managers make when they fail to protect their business assets:
- Denying that a business-tsunami could occur
- Delay or reluctance to plan for disaster
- Failure to conduct a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats)
- Inability to spot warning flags
- Insufficient plans
But companies from Lockheed to Marriott International reportedly had a difficult time contacting and helping homeless and hungry Gulf Coast employees in the disaster’s aftermath.
Data recovery was also problematic. Hewlett Packard disaster recovery spokesperson Belinda Wilson said her company served banks, chemical companies, government agencies, health care firms, and manufacturers. She was quoted as saying many were prepared for such a disaster but she was aware that many more weren’t.
That patterns the findings of a post-Katrina AT&T survey of 1,200 businesses in which 33 percent admitted they didn’t have a business continuity plan. Of those with a disaster strategy, 17 percent had never been tested.
Such devastation threatens a company’s three core assets: Finances, reputation, and people.
Katrina certainly highlighted the need for effective communication and strategies for catastrophes. Just as victims in New Orleans expected police officers to stay on the job in the face of natural disasters, companies and management are expected to provide an effective response for employees, their family members, customers, and suppliers.
Many regions of the U.S. can face similar disasters, such as fires, flooding, snowstorms, power outages, and earthquakes.
Four basic precautions
Make sure your business is prepared to provide the following:
- Immediate help and safety measures
- Information
- Compassion
- Return to normality
Where do you start in a business continuity plan? Your employees. Remember, aside from innovation and profitability, companies are revered when their employees are respected as paramount.
You are only as strong as your team of employees. And guess what? In an emergency, employees will worry first about their families, homes and pets. As you would expect in the aftermath of Katrina, it is worth noting that none of the interviewed victims worried out loud about her or his employer.
This also means even if you have the best continuity plan, you might not have anyone around to implement it.
Don’t forget your customer relationships. Make certain your employees are empathetic to traumatized customers.
19 tips to protect core assets
Depending on the severity of your emergency and the size of your business, here are 19 minimal steps to follow in order to protect your relationships and human capital:
- Obtain appropriate insurance to benefit your relationships.
- Determine the employees on whom you will depend to carry out a continuity plan. Consider possible incentives for them to show up and follow through in disaster.
- Maintain a detailed and distant offsite contact list of your workers.
- Make certain your plan includes room and board for your key employees.
- Establish policies for paying anticipated employee costs in implementing the plan.
- In your offsite location, store all maps and details.
- Determine what other measures are needed if authorities prohibit you from entering your business.
- Consider the need for counseling of your workers or other extraordinary measures to get people on their feet.
- Practice implementing the plan; some firms do each quarter.
- Educate employees regarding the plan and each person’s role. Make certain your employees are good representatives of your company in an emergency, if they suddenly become extemporaneous spokespersons on TV news programs.
- Network or share facilities with other firms your size for economies of scale.
- Safeguard your payroll system to be online within two weeks.
- Have a password-protected non-exempt section on your Web site and make allowances for employee questions and daily e-mail update.
- For managers, have a password-protected section allowing for questions and daily update.
- Develop key crisis-communication messages for managers to share with their employees.
- Don’t forget messages to include all stakeholders, such as the media, customers, partners, and government.
- Make certain your messages are accurate, but withhold necessary confidential information and explain why you must do so.
- Be empathetic in style and tone with employees and their family members.
- Encourage your employees to have a disaster plan for their families and to have an out-of-state contact person.
In addition, here are tips for filing an insurance claim.
From the Coach’s Corner, here’s more on crisis management and public relations:
- There are times to put a spin on events and there are times not to do so. Remember, if you are in a negative situation, do not try to put a positive spin on it when it’s unwarranted. The truth works.
- And if you’re asked a question, do not try to dodge it. Answer reporters’ questions. Most journalists will cut you some slack and allow you time to add salient information, if you’re honest and dedicated in your approach with them.
- See this topic, “Public Relations Expert Provides Crisis Management Tips.”
“I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.”
-John D. Rockefeller
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Author Terry Corbell has written innumerable online business-enhancement articles, and is a business-performance consultant and profit professional. Click here to see his management services. For a complimentary chat about your business situation or to schedule him as a speaker, consultant or author, please contact Terry.