Making a Daily Plan – Is It Worth It?

It’s easy to get distracted when working from home. Aside from calendared meetings that are difficult to change, requests from housemates, doorbells that demand answering, and the endless emails and texts that arrive all clamor for your attention, time, and a fraction of your working day. So how do you stay on course? Consider a daily work plan.

Many years ago, I had occasion to see a video by productivity legend Steven Covey.  In it he demonstrated conclusively why only by planning your work can you ensure that the most important or complex tasks and deliverables are completed on time.

I’ve always advised people to create their daily plan the day before, usually before shutting down for the day. Adding breaks, and plenty of time for what Covey calls, “the big rocks” (your top priorities for the day) helps to clear the decks and avoid missed deadlines. Alternatively, some people like to set aside 10 minutes first thing in the morning to plan – if they can ignore the phone long enough to get it done.

When planning, even when forced to work away from the office, it’s important to use a modality that is comfortable and consistent with your preferred working style. For example, some of us like to use traditional paper planners (like Franklin Planner) or simple lists, while others prefer electronic tools. It’s possible to use Outlook as a planning tool with readily available software overlays, or you could choose to use a more comprehensive planning tool that encompasses not only work activities, but the activities of daily life .

Whichever solution works best for you, be sure to be on the lookout for those “time wasters” that can wreck any plan. I have found the “start time delay” to be the biggest problem for me personally. There is always something to deal with before starting the workday, and frequently it leads to another task that just “must” get cleared. Excessive travel between appointments can also run out the clock, although with the growth of Zoom and Skype meetings, this time waster is less common.  

Finally, don’t overschedule. Allow for downtime during the day, a reasonable gap between meetings, and a heavy “think” session. Increase the number of scheduled tasks and meetings to your daily plan only after you’ve had success with a less aggressive schedule.

By following these simple steps, you will get increasingly adept at meeting daily objectives and higher lever goals. 

 

Planning for Success: Business Re-Visioning

Ask Questions to Re-vision your business

If I talk to you about “strategic planning,” you might nod your head sagely and admit that it seems like a good thing for big businesses to attempt. But many of my clients also believe that they can’t afford the time or money for such a process.  So when I talk to clients about “business planning,” I call it “Business Re-Visioning” because it sounds more affordable in time and money . . . and actually it is. The process I recommend can be completed by most business owners over several days in about four 1-hr sessions.

No one has a crystal ball, but at least once a year everyone should take the time to review assumptions, align resources, and communicate goals. A process that I like to use with my professional services clients is sparing of their time; helps them size opportunities, risks, needed investment and marketing campaigns; and positions them well for success. I have put together a presentation on this process. 

Taking Stock

When I went out for Chinese food today with friends, my “fortune” in the dessert cookie was an interesting piece of wisdom:  “The keys to a successful future lie in the past.”  Sometimes those slips of paper in the cookies are silly; this one was right on.

How did the previous period—year, quarter, whatever—turn out? What revenue, profit, or unit production/sales did you experience? What segments accounted for that “market activity”—who are you selling to? If you invested in your business (or spent money), how did you spend it? When?

A SWOT (Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities/Threats) analysis is useful for pulling together information on the status quo and for organizing all bits of information in a single place. We’ve already written about the utility and value of SWOT for business planning   

Positioning and Segmentation

Who are you currently selling to? Why are they buying from you?  Answering these questions will tell you how you are positioned in the minds of your customers. Is this the positioning you want?  Do you need to tweak your message or how you’re delivering it to create a better impression in the minds of your customers? How does your product or service compare with similar product or services offered by your competition?  Are there unique aspects to your offerings that distinguish them from your competition? 

One of my clients told me about his recent process in selecting a caterer for an event. Three vendors were identified that had similar offerings and pricing, and the vendor was selected on the basis of its superior food,  which my client felt would make a positive lasting impression at his event. Do you know what criteria your customers will use to evaluate you and other service providers in the year ahead?  Are you sure your differentiating elements are ones your customers truly care about?

Are there additional services/products that your existing customers would buy from you if you offered them? Are there some services/products you could offer that would help you acquire NEW customers, who might then also become customers for your existing products and services?  Keep in mind that you don’t have to make or originate the service or product you sell. 

Setting Goals

This is the most important step of your re-visioning process. Everything you do going forward is driven off your goals for the future of your enterprise. What is your vision for the future of your business? How do you want to grow it or change it in the months ahead? What is your vision for what you will sell, to whom and for what price? Who will you partner with, and from whom will you buy services and products? How will you become more efficient, more profitable, and better known in the months ahead?

Your thinking process may begin with identifying some trends, but to be able to determine if you successfully achieve your goals, those goals must be measurable, specific, and achievable and linked to a timeframe.  I like to discuss my business goals with my colleagues, business mentors, and even my family. They all have contributed to helping me refine my goals and avoid “pot holes” en-route.  

Market Intervention

“Wishing doesn’t make it so.” I think that might be a song lyric, but it is certainly a truism in marketing. If you want to change the status quo, you must intervene in the market in some way. Now that you have goals and a clear idea of the directions you want to move in, how will you effect the changes you want to make in your business and its market?

I look at the mix of marketing interventions as being particularly relevant for service marketers. Again, we have written about the importance of planning for and investing in a mix of marketing interventions.

Scheduling, Measuring, and Tracking

You have a clear idea of what you want to accomplish in the next year. You have completed a marketing plan and have confirmed that you have the financial and staff resources necessary to move forward.  Now it is important to create a unified “marketing and Business calendar “that will function as the central place where you book all of your planned initiatives. Since you will be engaging in many simultaneous activities, coordination is essential. 

And everything will perform as expected, right?  Nah. There are bound to be hiccups and problems.  I recently redid my website .  We used data collected from Google Analytics   to refine our key words and adjust many features.  When I do email marketing, my provider, www.swiftpage.com can tell me what phrases used in headlines or subject lines are more effective in getting readers to click on the content and read it. They can even tell me which “targeted readers” interacted with the content more than others, and which ones I should call to follow up with.  

If you invest in some kind of marketing interventions—email marketing, new website, postcards, telemarketing—carefully consider and set up a process for measuring what works and what doesn’t.

You’ll need this information next year when you take stock of your business and “Re-vision” your future.

Your Marketing Plan: Make 2012 a Successful Year!

When I was growing up in Connecticut, I would always know when my family was about to take a trip: My dad would announce that he had received the TripTik^R. This customized set of maps from AAA, still used today, had been assembled in a package of easily “flipable  pages” to guide our auto travel. These maps would keep us on the right road, help us choose excellent stopping points, and help us avoid hazards like road construction and speed traps. To Dad, it was unthinkable to take a long road trip without his TripTik.

You business needs a TripTik, too. Your thoughtfully prepared marketing plan fills the same function for your business. Just as a TripTik links your starting point with your destination, your marketing plan requires identifying your specific business goals for the year.  The process of creating a marketing plan then fills in the blanks by answering these questions: how will you get there? What strategies and techniques will you employ? How will you spend your resources” Who will assist you?  If you want to achieve your objectives—and you do!--It is just smart business to invest in your own success by spending giving some time and thought to how your marketing plan for next year will enable you to achieve them. 

Start by asking and answering questions.

Identify your goals. Goal setting can be hard, especially if they required that you must reach a consensus with others. Professional facilitators frequently use a technique called “back casting” to surface ideas from groups that have trouble formulating goals. Here’s how it might work:

 Imagine it is Thanksgiving Day 2014. A full 2 years have passed!  We’re all a little greyer or a little wider in all the wrong places. We’re going around the table talking about what has gone well and how much we appreciate the breaks we’ve had. When it is your turn, you rise and begin describing the specifics in your life, particularly in your business. How have things improved? What has changed for the good? What new challenges are you convinced you can surmount? 

Psychologists tell us that we always underestimate how fast things can change and that the more we can use our imagination; the easier it is for us to come up with new ideas.  By focusing on a future date that seems far into the future, we allow out imagination to seek out-of-the-box ideas. Yet the reality is that, once unleashed, our businesses are capable of moving quickly to achieve new goals and dreams: A goal for 2014 frequently becomes a plan for 2012.

Goals are important, as are the traditional Who, What, When and Where – and “how much” questions. A SWOT (Strengths,Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis is always part of the marketing plan that I develop for clients. This is also where competitive research can be helpful. Are other companies serving similar markets or making a similar product? What do their offerings look like? How are they priced? Is their marketing working for them?  It used to be very difficult to get this information, but the Internet makes collecting this info easier. What about data that you can’t get on the internet or by interviewing customers?  There are still ways to collect and use competitive information that are affordable and practical for small businesses. I recommend the Entrepreneurs Guide to Market Research by Anne Wenzel, which will be available in January 2012.

Giving thought to where you want to end up—your business goals—will inform the next steps, which determine how you make your journey – that is, how you execute your marketing plan. Planning obviously involves more than just setting direction. It also is the time to decide to focus on one or more target markets, the strategy to be employed, and the techniques that you will use to carry out that strategy.  By “strategies” I mean, given a particular target market, how you will implement your goals.  Typical strategies include Thought leadership, Pricing adjustment (Impact Pricing), or service productization. Once you have developed a working strategy, typically it is important to plan for a variety of techniques to realize your goal; these can include trade shows, websites, telemarketing, and email, to name a few. It is important to employ a mix a techniques since not all customers respond well to the same technique .

“How Much” can only be answered once you know the “where,” “who,” and  “what.” Understanding the value of a new customer and the underlying cost of what you are selling (in labor or materials) will allow you to judge what you should “pay” to acquire a new customer.  

 

Finally, it is important to build into your marketing plan certain “check-in” points.  These represent opportunities to correct mistakes, revise assumptions, and correct for drift away from your objective. My dad’s TripTik consisted of specific pre-printed pages. Although it, too, is your guide to achieving your business destination, your marketing plan is a living document and will need to change with events that affect your market and the lives your customers are living.