This is part two of a two part blog…

When advising business owners one of the issues we insist they do is periodic reviews of their business. While year-end is a great time to take stock of the past year and lay plans for the New Year, you should also do mid-year and even quarterly reviews.

Here are the last four of the seven tips to get you started!

Create a Marketing Plan - Evaluate your marketing mix for the past year, and make changes for the better for the coming year. Freshen up your marketing message and strategy. Are you consistently getting the right message out to the public, or do you find your strategy and materials are sending out mixed messages? ¬

Update the Database - Review your database, updating information as needed. Renew contact with lapsed customers, and touch base with your existing customers. Ask for more referrals from some of your best customers; connecting their associates business with yours is a win-win situation. It is a quick and inexpensive way to increase business.

Review Staff- ldentify staff behaviors and accomplishments that should be acknowledged or even rewarded. Also, identify those whose behaviors or work need to be addressed and improved. Everyone wants feedback on: how they are doing. If you have difficulty remembering pertinent examples, schedule a few minutes each day or week to update notes (both positive and negative) for performance reviews for each of your direct reports.

Learn Something New - Resolve to update or improve your profession¬al skills. Take a class or plan to read a book or two in an area in which you feel you could use more training.

Eliminating products or services? Let affected customers know the reasons and provide alternatives (even a competitor) for their needs. Some of these customers may also purchase from your more profitable areas now or in the future, so do not alienate them or adversely affect your reputation.
 

This is part one of a two part blog…

When advising business owners one of the issues we insist they do is periodic reviews of their business. While year-end is a great time to take stock of the past year and lay plans for the New Year, you should also do mid-year and even quarterly reviews.

Here are three of the seven tips to get you started!

Run a Financial Check-Up - Are you where you had hoped to be finan¬cially for the year? Check your Profit and Loss, Income, and Expense Reports. Review your sales reports to determine the more profitable areas of business and areas where sales were sub par. Create a plan for increasing business in more profitable areas during the coming year. Either prepare to eliminate less profitable ventures, channels, or market segments or create plans to increase their profitability.

Prepare a Budget - Examine your projected budget and actual expenses for the year. Prepare a budget for the New Year, and resolve to stick to it! Factor in expenses for computer and software updates and purchas¬es of new equipment. Be sure to allow for changes in your marketing strategy for the upcoming year. Prepare a list of areas to cut if profits or cash flow start running below expectations and a list of contingent opportunities to add or increase if cash flow runs higher.

Plan to Succeed - Businesses that fail to plan, plan to fail. Create that fresh business plan you’ve been thinking about. Or, if your financial check-up shows variances, fine-tune your existing business plan for the coming year. Set aside some quality time in January to lay the ground¬work for future sales.
 

As a business advisor and coach I frequently run into businesses that have no consistency in their business approach. That could their marketing, advertising, planning, problem solving, delegation and so on.

I advise them to get a systematic approach to all their endeavors, when you systemize processes they become stable, consistent, repeatable and duplicatable.

I found the following list while reading Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson. While reviewing the list it struck me that many (most) could and should be applied to every aspect of your business.

The Thirteen Most Important Marketing Secrets
1. You must have commitment to your program.
2. Think of the program as an investment.
3. See to it that your program is consistent.
4. Make your prospects confident in your firm.
5. You must be patient to keep a commitment.
6. You must see that marketing is an assortment of weapons.
7. You must know that profits come subsequent to the sale.
8. You must aim to run your firm in a way that makes it convenient for your customers.
9. Put an element of amazement in your marketing.
10. Use measurement to judge the effectiveness of your weapons.
11. Establish a situation of involvement between you and your customers.
12. Listen to become dependent on other businesses and they upon you.
13. You must be skilled with the armament of guerrillas, which means technology.

You must…
Have commitment
Be consistent in your approach and processes
Be patient at all times
Be confident in your outlook
Have an assortment of tactics and strategies
Make it convenient for all stakeholders
Measure your progress
Be involved in internal and external forces
Be dependent on others (and visa-versa)
Be a master in your skills

It doesn’t matter what your working on, most of the list will apply.
 

Geez, what is with me and analogies lately? I want to talk about GPS units and Business Plans – what? Bear with me now…

My wife and I decided to go shopping and take the back way (which we had never been on), so we plugged in the destination and took off, after all we had our trusty GPS. Well as my Frank would say trusting a GPS in the Back Country is like trusting a used cal salesman, it’s something you may have to do, but you don’t want to make a habit of it.

We were soon lost – what the GPS views as a road and what we view as a road are two entirely different things, even with All Wheel Drive. We didn’t care, we enjoyed the ride (and this is so unlike me – “Mr.-Point-a-to-Point-b”), the scenery was nice and it was a beautiful day. We could have whined about the trip taking an hour and a half versus the normal 20-25 minutes and so on, but we just rolled with it and had a good time.

This reminded me of Business Plans – by definition once a Business Plan is written, it is increasingly obsolete. Yes the Business Plan is your roadmap but you had better be prepared for some detours and u-turns along the way, because they are going to happen.

You should be reviewing and revising your Business Plan – at the very least quarterly – frequently to see how you are progressing towards your goals and objectives. Do not wait until the end of the year to see where you’ve been versus where you wanted to go. This is self-defeating.

While you should always keep your original version of the Business Plan so you can learn from reviewing it. But don’t be dogmatic and say this is plan and we’re going to stick to it no matter what. Stuff happens, stuff changes, roll with it. Revise your plan and move on.
 

When working on goal setting and achieving with clients, as their business adviser I instruct them that when setting goals and objectives for their self or their business, the goals and objectives need to have certain attributes to be effective. I show them the acronym SMART to remember the attributes.

SMART stands for (I will cover the first two letters today and follow up in my next post with the last three):

S is for Simple. Your goals should be clear and easy to describe. You want to weigh 175 pounds, or save $10,000 this year. Your goal is to run a marathon or to purchase a computer by the end of the year. If it takes more than 25 words to describe your goal, simplify it!

S also stands for Significant. Don’t waste time chasing trivial goals! If you are merely thinking about a goal, forget it! Goals must have significance for you. Choose things that are important, that get you excited, things that will make a difference in your life.

M is for Measurable. A goal without a specific result is just a pipe-dream. You can’t achieve a pound of "happiness", or a foot of "self-esteem", but you CAN get a new job. You CAN run a mile in under 7 minutes or do 100 sit-ups. You CAN spend Saturdays as a family, or increase your sales by 10% this month. Someone has wisely said, "What gets measured gets done!"

I would like to discuss training for a bit.

Do you do training in your business? Even if you’re an army of one you should be doing some kind of training! In my opinion if you stop learning – or training yourself – you will stop advancing. Some of you will think that is no more to learn or train on, I disagree. Business is changing so fast, new methods and concepts are being produced at a dizzying rate that to fail to train is training to fail.

Why do we train? What’s the point? What kinds of training are there? I believe there are four general categories of training:
• Training to learn a new skill
• Training to reinforce or sharpen an existing skill
• Training to help accomplish a task, goal or objective
• Training to gain understanding (Sexual Harassment Training, Hostile Environment Training, etc.)

Now the above types of training can be commingled – you could train to learn a skill, which will help you accomplish a task and so on.

Can anyone give me a valid business reason for not doing training? I can’t think of one myself. If any of you think you do have a reason, please let me know. But bear in mind that “I don’t have time”, “It’s too expensive” and “It’s a low priority” are not valid business reason, they are justifications or excuses.

There are is a side benefit or byproduct of training; if you are training your staff then you will learn the subject matter better. If one of your staff people are doing the training then the will learn the subject matter better.

Training must have a specific point. There must be a clear and well defined reason or point (or benefit to the business) for the training. Your training should support your efforts to accomplish a Strategic Objective. If it does not, why is the training being done? Training for training sake is intellectually dishonest.

Training, whether it is to train yourself or to empower and increase your subordinate’s skills, is the essence of leadership.

In the future postings we review how long takes to learn a new skill and training plans.
 

As with the seven questions for the strategy summary, there are seven basic sections or elements of a marketing plan:
 The Benefit to the consumer
 Your positioning in the marketplace: Just what business are you in?
 Your target market
 Your marketing / advertising strategy and positioning
 Your marketing budget
 The tools and techniques (weapons) you will use to reach your audience
 A month-by-month implementation schedule

In this article we will look at Your Marketing Budget, Your Marketing Weapons and the Implementation Schedule.

Your Marketing Budget
When developing your marketing budget, and yes everyone needs a marketing budget for the following reasons.
 There is a natural ebb and flow of the business cycle for every business. Spending your marketing dollars at the wrong time, becomes a double whammy – a) you’ve either spent marketing dollars you could have conserved or didn’t spend enough and b) the return on those dollars will not be as effective as they should be.
 Unless its on paper, it’s a concept not a plan.
 Without setting down a concrete budget you won’t have the road map you need.
 Without setting down a concrete budget it’s too easy to forget, rationalize and justify changing the dollars spent.

When starting your budgeting process the number one thing you need to do is determine what percentage of revenue you are going to spend on marketing. 10% is a good starting point. Review your annual business plan (you have done your annual plan haven’t you) and spend accordingly. Reviewing your annual business plan will also give you an idea of the ebb and flow of your business cycle and tell you when to increase or decrease the percentage.

Another option is to figure out the life time value (and the annual value) your customers and figure out what it is worth to retain your current customers and gain new customers. Gaining new customers is more expensive than retaining current customers. Figure out your current customer base and their annual value to extrapolate your current customer base value. Next, review your annual business plan if your sales are more than this (and it better be) figure out the new customers you are going to acquire. This will tell you, in a bit finer detail how much to spend on marketing and when.

Marketing Weapons
In Jay Conrad Levinson’s recent writings he has come up with 200 Marketing Weapons. These range from Mini-Media (Business Cards, Stationary, Brochures, etc), Maxi-Media (Advertising, Direct Mail and so on), E-Media, Info-Media, Non-Media, Company Attributes and Company Attitude.

Go through these and decide which ones are cost-effective for you to reach your market. Make a list of tools, their cost per use, monthly frequency and monthly cost. Review and refine the list until you have a finely honed batch of tools and weapons.

A month-by-month implementation schedule
Next, layout a 12 month grid with months across the top and the weapons and tools down the side. Determine which weapons you’re going to use and when you’re going to use them. Stick to the plan, review it monthly and revise as necessary.

Now you have a well thought out, coherent and cohesive plan. It’s time to implement it, go get going!!

Click here to down a copy of this article.

In the planning series we tried to give you the tools necessary for formulating a business plan. While a plan is all well and good, most business owners stop at making their plan, and then the plan goes on the shelf gathering dust forevermore.

Dreams and ambitions are great and important, but results are what really count in the business world. Therefore, it is important to establish realistic goals with a sound methodology for achieving them.

A key to a great business plan is actually achieving the plan! Below are the steps I use and recommend to my clients to:
 Set Your Goals & Objectives
 Break your Plans down into digestible and doable portions of an action plan
 Review and Track your progress
 Modify your action plan

The above steps are based on the P-D-C-A (Plan, Do, Check, Act) Cycle used in process improvement. The P-D-C-A cycle is effective in improving processes in a efficient manner. It is also very effective in achieving your Goals & Objectives.

Goal Setting

1) Generate your three to five year Plan; this is your Strategic Plan or Business Plan (the view from 30,000 feet).

2) Generate your one year plan; based on your Strategic Plan, this is your Tactical Plan or Annual Operating Plan (the view from a mile high).

These are your Overall (Strategic) Goals & Objectives and Plans.

Breaking the G & O’s and the Plan into smaller ACTION plans

3) Generate your Quarterly or Monthly Plan; based on your Annual Operating Plan, this breaks it down into much more digestible portions (the view from a thousand feet)

4) Each week break your Monthly or Quarterly plan down into a plan of attack for the week (the view from a hundred feet).

5) Each day break your weekly plan into your daily commitments and to dos to support the weekly plan (the view from eye level).

These are your Tactical Goals & Objectives and Plans. These are your commitments, to yourself, to your business, to your employees and to your clients and vendors.

Some business owners stop at step one or two, this is a huge mistake. How do you review, track or modify your action plan once a year or even worse once every three years?

If you break your Plans into smaller and smaller parts is much easier to determine and therefore accomplish the specific steps necessary to achieving your goals and objectives in an effective and efficient manner.

Periodic Review and Modification of the Plan

Periodically you need to review how your plan is working – compare your actual results and progress against where you intended to be, what you intended to get done. Ask yourself the following questions
     Are my expectations too low?
     Are my expectations too high?
     Is this necessary?
     Why did I fall short in a particular action step or action plan?
     Why was I successful in a particular action step or action plan?
     What methods can I replicate from the successful actions in the actions that need work?

When something is not working, get some outside help to analyze why? This can be a partner, a peer, a trusted business friend or an outside professional. The point is that the extra set of eyes can spot flaws in your plan or your execution that you can’t or – more probably – won’t see.

This is why it’s important for all business owners to have a support group of some kind (we will cover this in another article).

Your Strategic and Tactical plans should take two days each, once a year.

Your weekly plan should take an hour at the most.

Your daily commitments and to dos shouldn’t take more than ten minutes to do.

Are you willing to spend two hours a week and a few days a year to stay on track, work on the critical issues, save yourself hundreds of hours (not working on the wrong or lower priority issues)?

Click here to down a copy of this article.

As with the seven questions for the strategy summary, there are seven basic sections or elements of a marketing plan:
 The Benefit to the consumer
 Your positioning in the marketplace: Just what business are you in?
 Your target market
 Your marketing / advertising strategy and positioning
 Your marketing budget
 The tool and techniques (weapons) you will use to reach your audience
 A month-by-month implementation schedule

In this article we will look at Marketing / Advertising Strategy and Positioning.

Marketing & Advertising Strategy
The key components to determine a Marketing & Advertising Strategy are:
1. Product or Service
2. Target Market
3. Competition
4. The Product’s Benefit
5. How is it differentiated from the competition?
6. What impression would the consumer get from the strategy?
7. What action would the consumer take after being exposed to the Strategy?

We have covered Product or Service, Target Market and Benefits components already so we will concentrate on remaining components (Competition, Differentiation, message or impression and Action by the consumer) in this module.

Competition
Who is your competition? For our liquor store it would be everything from the local liquors stores to Beverages and More, Upscale Wine Cellars in San Diego, Wineries, Super-markets and to some extent the Big Box stores.

Differentiation
How is your product/service/presentation different from your competition? Describe your position and your competitions position. For our liquor store our position was described in Part 3. For the competition’s position it is either an upscale competitor that is a great distance away (inconvenient) or a regular liquor store in close proximity (low knowledge of wines & liquors and poor customer service).

Impression or Idea
What is impression you want the customer to take away from your marketing and advertising? What is the one idea you want them to get out of your ad?
For our liquor store it could be, you don’t have to go a great distance to enjoy a fine wine cellar and stellar service.

Call to Action
What action would you want the reader to take after being exposed to your ad or marketing piece? For our store it would be “don’t drive 30 miles or more, come in and enjoy superlative wines and service here in town”.

Click here to down a copy of this article.

As with the seven questions for the strategy summary, there are seven basic sections or elements of a marketing plan:
 The Benefit to the consumer
 Your positioning in the marketplace: Just what business are you in?
 Your target market
 Your marketing / advertising strategy and positioning
 Your marketing budget
 The tool and techniques (weapons) you will use to reach your audience
 A month-by-month implementation schedule

In this article we will look at Positioning and Your Target Market.

Positioning
It’s much easier to be successful in business when you have created a product or service that the public actually wants (and not necessarily – needs). Positioning is easy – find a need (niche) and fill it.

The most difficult part is determining what the product or service that the consumer will line up for.

First determine the product or service you plan to offer. If you’re going to open a liquor store, don’t say “liquor store”, instead say a “Gourmet wine cellar and upscale liquor cabinet, located in bucolic village of Fallbrook”.

List the features your product or service will offer that will differentiate you from your competition (just how many liquor stores are there):
Low cost / high scoring wines Top of the line Liquors
Wine tasting classes Liquor & Food Parings
Wine & Food Parings Ultimate in service
“No Wine Snobs Allowed”

Now identify the advantages and benefits (go back to Part 2) of your product or service, are your benefits that much more than your competitors?

Target Market
Once you have determined your benefits, the by definition you have virtually identified who your product is for – your Target Market. Now stratify your market further. Using the above example – if you said “Alcohol drinkers”, try again. Create the market in your mind and then fill a need they will have:

Upscale clientele                                                         High discretionary income
Discriminating taste in wine & liquors                    They are still cost-conscious
Don’t want to go all the way to San Diego              A fun & casual approach to Wine

Now you have a market and it time to test your thinking, do a focus group, etc. Test, Test and Test some more until you have your niche completely identified.

Click here to down a copy of this article.