![How in sync are you with your clients’ buying cycles?]()
by Karen Skidmore | 04,15 | Marketing Articles
If I was to ask you think about marketing and what you did to bring in new clients, I bet you could start reeling off a list of tools and tactics.
Facebook, networking events, ebooks, exhibitions, LinkedIn, advertising in your local parish mag … a big long list of all the ways that you think you could be getting in front of your potential clients.
When most people think about marketing, it’s almost always the place they start. At the top of the marketing cycle which I refer to as your Lead Generation Strategies.
The problem is that this is the place that most people like you stay and keep focusing your time, efforts and resources on.
As you can see from my graphic here, there are actually 5 strategies in your marketing cycle. Lead generation is only one and staying focused here, you are missing out on huge opportunities. If you are a new business, for example, then this is definitely where you start. But as you start taking on a few clients here and there and build up your database, you need to move along and focus your energies elsewhere if you want to grow.
Let me explain.
Kelly is a careers coach. She’s been going for a few years and stays busy marketing her coaching practice by attending a couple of regular networking groups, speaking at a conference or event once or twice a month and has a published book she sells via Amazon. One the face of it, she looks successful and appears to be attracting enough clients.
The truth of it is though is she struggles each month to get above £3,000 revenue. She has enough clients to keep her going, but she’s not getting enough traction to grow and build her business.
Kelly has aspirations to have enough work coming in to have a small team of associates. But first, she would just love to be able to earn enough consistently to hire a proper PA because she’s getting bogged down with admin, client invoicing and coaching paperwork.
Everyone she meets seems to love what she has to offer and she knows her programmes are a good price – certainly not cheap but offer incredible value. Her clients get the results she knows they are capable of.
So with all the marketing she does, why isn’t Kelly able to step up and bring in enough business to grow?
Kelly is making the common mistake of spending all her marketing time, energy and resources on her Lead Generation Strategy. She’s out networking and speaking and sells a good number of her books … but that is where her marketing grinds to a halt.
Your clients are constantly moving around their own buying cycle. They may spend months, if not years, thinking about doing something about that problem they want solving. But it’s only when something triggers them into action (usually a health, finance, family or career problem!) that they go out and seek someone to solve their problem.
As Kelly was only working her Lead Generation Strategy, she was assuming her potential clients were ready to buy.
The truth is that most of the people she was coming in to contact with love what she did, but their buying cycles were not in sync her marketing and selling cycle; they are simply not ready to buy right now.
She’d meet people but only pick up on the ones that were ready to take action right now, and this was getting her her £3,000 a month … but never any more.
And this is why spending time working on your Follow Up Strategy and Conversion Strategy is critical; helping stay in sync with your potential clients so that when they are ready to buy, you just happen to be there for them at the right time.
Harnessing the power of email marketing is the most obvious and easiest way to create a follow up strategy. But sometimes a simple follow up spreadsheet is all that’s needed.
Following up doesn’t need to be complicated, but it does need to be persistent.
Following up doesn’t need to be hard-selling either, but it does need to tenacious.
Following up doesn’t need to be rude … in fact I find it rather rude when a business that I’ve shown an interest in – be it requested a brochure or signed up for something on their website – ignores me once the original request has been fulfilled.
Following up can be graceful, professional, smart and even fun.
In fact, there is one online company – Naked Wines – I always recommend my clients check out for inspiration for a great British follow up that proves you can follow up with some serious fun factor. Just don’t blame me when you start spending lots of money on great wine!
Now I know I may hear you sigh “oh, what more work!” If you are already busy and juggling lots of balls, I totally understand that I may have added yet something else to your every increasing your to-do list.
But this is not what it’s about. This is NOT ad admin exercise!
Spending time creating a simple (and yes, a basic spreadsheet that tracks your follow up calls, letters and emails, could be all that you need right now to get going) follow up system will bring in dividends over the coming weeks and months.
If you have running a business for more than 6 months and you’ve built up a database – even it’s only got a few hundred names and email addresses in it – I promise you that there are diamonds in that database.
Are you prepared to roll up your sleeves and do a little diamond mining?
If you are serious about growing your business and you are looking for clarity on how you can ditch 90% of your marketing to-do list and be shown what 10% will get you results, then apply for one of my limited available calls. Click here for more info.
by Karen Skidmore | 03,15 | Marketing Articles, Pillar Articles
There appears to have been a theme for me this week in several conversations with my clients.
“I’ve been putting in the hard work, but when will I get the results?”
It’s what I struggle with myself from time to time. I go hard at something – a new plan or trying out a different marketing strategy – and then get frustrated when I don’t achieve what I thought I ought to get.
When you follow a particular path that you believe is going to get you where you think you want to go and you have laid out your goals and targets for each step of that journey, it is tough when the goals and targets you’ve set don’t materialise the way you thought they would.
It’s tempting to throw your toys out of the pram, to want to hide under the duvet, to start thinking thoughts of wanting to give up and go do something easier; something simpler; something that doesn’t feel as hard as it does right now.
But giving up is not an option.
Sowing the seeds for future business can be unpredictable and, being human, it is usual for us to want to control and see results fast. And to throw more anguish into the equation, we often get emotionally attached to the results and blame ourselves for not performing the way we thought we would.
I know there are plenty of experts and articles on the wonderful world wide web that try and tell us differently. Automate and set up marketing funnels to bring in new leads and all your business dreams will come true … well, I can tell you that comes from a land of Unicorns pooping jelly tots!
Some seeds don’t come with exact germination timings.
And some seeds just take a very, very long time to shoot up.
Take the bamboo farmers. When they sow the bamboo seeds, they take not one, not two but five years for anything to appear above ground level. For five years, those bamboo seeds are growing their roots under the soil and it’s not until the fifth year that they shoot up 80 feet tall within just 6 weeks.
Do the bamboo farmers start blaming themselves after a year or so that the shoots haven’t started to appear? No … they know it’s a waiting game of looking after their crops.
Now, does that mean some of your seeds may take up to five years to shoot up?
Well, yes. Possibly.
But there will also be seeds that take 6 weeks. And some that will take 2 months. And some that will be even years before you harvest those business leads.
Patience is not a virtue often associated with entrepreneurial types and people who run their own businesses. At best it is over-looked or ignored; at worst it is viewed as being weak for not seizing the day and surging forth with action.
However, I see patience as being critical to your growth, both in business and personal terms.
Patience is not about cruising along and avoiding what’s needed doing to see your business grow. It’s not about being complacent or sitting cross legged on the floor asking the Universe for new clients.
To me being patience is keeping cool and calm and recognising all the little results that are telling you you are on a right path.
When I find myself in the midst of getting caught up with “I’m working hard, why am I not getting results?” storm (and it is a storm because I get buffeted around, picking up bruises and bumps along the way!), patience goes straight out the window.
I get emotionally attached to the outcomes which usually results in pushing away business.
Let the storm calm and see the journey for what it is, and I’m able to see results and the good things happening all around me.
As a business owner, it is your job to sow seeds each and every week. Some weeks there will be more seeds than others, of course. But to only sow seeds when you absolutely need the business and you find yourself on the wire, and no matter how patient you are, they probably won’t germinate in time for you to meet your harvest deadlines.
Some seeds will be ready when they decide they are ready. You simply can’t speed up seeds that don’t want to be sped up. Start forcing that seed and then blame yourself for not getting the harvest you wanted and you will be pushing business away.
Once you’ve planted, you need to nurture them. And whilst you nurture those seeds, you need to carry on and plant some more. And then some more.
There is no simple answer to when is the right time for harvesting, I’m afraid. But I hope by reading this I’ve inspired you to be patience and to keep sowing seeds and keep taking action whilst you wait for results to happen.
How do you cope with waiting for leads to convert in to business? Do you get frustrated by doing “the hard work” and not seeing results quick enough? I would love to read your thoughts so add a comment below and join in the conversation.
by Karen Skidmore | 02,15 | Marketing Articles
Do you angst over your charge rates most weeks? Are you charging enough? Are you charging too much? Are you charging a fair fee for what it is you do?
The mental games you play with yourself over what and how to charge for your time, your products, your services and your programmes can go on for hours, days and weeks. If pricing was a sport, there’s every chance you’d get a Gold Medal, isn’t there?
Most people who read my articles and subscribe to my newsletter sell themselves. So I am guessing that you do too.
And when what you offer is intangible – you can’t touch, smell, feel or hold what you offer – so it can be a challenge working out how to price what you do so that you – and your client – profit. As there are very little in the way of raw materials, distribution or labour costs to take account of, working out how to charge for the time you offer in your service based business can feel like waving a wet finger in the air at times.
Because, let’s be honest here. It’s not about charging the highest price you can possibly stretch to. Plucking a big figure out of the air and then expecting someone (just anyone!) to pay at that high price, just ain’t going to work.
The price that you charge has to profit you … and it has to profit your client too. If it’s not a win win and the results and experience that you client gets does not exceed the money investment, then you are going to be in a business for a very short while.
Profitable pricing has to work for both parties and it’s not as simply doubling, tripling or quadrupling what you current charge.
So how do you go about profitable pricing?
1) Stop charging by the hour.
Most coaches, therapists, designers and consultants set themselves up with a clear price per hour or price per session. Whether that’s £35 for a 30 minute treatment or £70 for a coaching session or £60 an hour of design time … you will always get stuck as you get busier and busier. Your profitability will start decreasing and you will find yourself working harder and harder just to keep your income increasing.
Bolt on holidays, days on your sick bed or even deciding to take the odd day off here and there, and you will soon start to realise that your income will always be capped.
Yes, you can put your hourly rate or price per session up but when your charge rates are based on your time, your clients will always have a maximum they will be prepared to pay for that hour. They WILL compare you to what they pay their cleaner or the tutor for their kids or who ever else they pay by the hour.
2) Start charging by the programme or product.
What ever you do for your clients, I highly doubt whether you can fix your client in one, single hour of your time. Your clients may come to you initially for a quick fix, but for most of you there will always be an opportunity to take your clients onwards and upwards either by up skilling them, supporting them through implementation or change taking place or even taking them up to the next level.
Your clients want to be fixed and if you explain that there is a journey – a start point and an end point – that they will need to go on, it makes sense to bundle up your time to fulfill that journey.
After all, if your car was stranded on the shoulder of the motorway, would you really be happy to take just a quick fix to get you home, knowing that it would break down again the very next day? You may take the quick fix there and then, but there’s every chance you will follow through by booking it back in with the garage for the recommended replacement parts and service.
Not only are you able to sell more upfront to each new client and thus reduce the stress of having to sell each and every time your client comes back to you (and if they come back to you!), your client is happier knowing what budget they are working to and the length of time they expect their problem to be fixed.
3) Know that it makes no odds how YOU feel about the price … it’s how your clients feel about it that counts.
I have lost count of the number of conversations I have had with clients who were unsure whether to go for one price or another. And the difference between each price they are debating is negligible. “Should I go for £295 or £275?” … “Should I charge £3,995 or £3,445?” It makes no odds … so always go for the higher of the two.
If you do your job as a marketer right and help your potential client truly understand the benefits and results that they are going to get as a result of working with you, then whether they pay £295 or £275 makes no odds. They will either want to buy … or not. £25 is neither here nor there.
4) Be confident in what you charge.
One of the problems I see in many of my clients is that they want to charge higher prices before they are ready to accept them. What I mean by this is that they don’t feel worthy of the price they want to ask for.
If you are at all unsure or you begin to question whether you are “not enough” for the price you set, then bring it down a peg or two. If you don’t feel it inside, then you are going to come across as unconvincing and chicken out of conversations that will bring you clients. So make it easy on yourself and charge at a price that you can roar!
5) Know that there will also be times that you will HAVE to step up.
Being confident and playing safe are two different states of mind. Over time, your confidence at one level of pricing will begin to melt in to complacency. As you gain clients, become more well known in your field, you must remember to check in with the value you give your clients.
There will come a time that you will need to re-appraise your prices, take a deep breath in and take them up a level to reflect the level of work that you do right now. Playing safe will lead to mediocrity. And mediocrity may well eventually kill your business.
Pricing is a game. A game you play with yourself and sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t. Your clients will pay what you believe you can charge. There will be times that you will want to build up your confidence and there will be times that you will want to scare yourself silly to step up to the next level.
When you have a business that is not as easy of costing out the raw materials, costing out labour and adding the appropriate percentage mark-up … you have to play the game.
And knowing that it is usually YOU that gets in the way of how profitable you can be, allows you to be in control over what you can charge.
Do you struggle with knowing what to charge? Or perhaps you know this game and have set your rules already. Leave a thought, comment or observation below. I would love to hear from you.
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by Karen Skidmore | 11,14 | Marketing Articles
Following up and keeping in touch are easily forgotten.
Day to day you are busy responding to emails, client projects, telephone calls and whatever else demands your attention. Days can merge into weeks; weeks into months. And before you know it, that potential client you spoke to about starting a new project has been lost in the ether of time.
Now I know you want to become a magnet to your clients. Chase them too hard and it’s easy to feel worried that you may come across as being desperate for the business. And, after all, isn’t it better to have them chase you?
But when you are now left wondering how long you should go before following up with their initial enquiry, that’s where holes start appearing in your business.
Whatever your reasons are for “forgetting” to follow up and keep in touch with people who have shown an interest in what you do, not doing anything about it is crazy. Especially when you spend most of your marketing time trying to find new contacts and leads to speak to!
If you are forgetting the ones that you’ve already found, you are leaving a stack load of money on the table. You need to plug up those holes!
But what to do about it?
1) What follow up did you agree? The most common mistake made is not agreeing on a time, day or action for following up. Never leave a conversation without agreeing the next time of the next call or meeting or what is supposed to happen next. If the next step is to make contact again is not imminent, then at the very least decide on a time scale; whether that’s 6 weeks or 6 months.
2) How you think about the follow up is the way it’s going to go. If you feel that following up with someone is salesy, that’s exactly how it will come across. If you feel slightly desperate about winning the business, that’s exactly how it will come across.Remember your potential clients are human beings too. The reason they haven’t got back to you may actually have nothing to do with the fact they don’t want to work with you. A member of their team has just resigned and it’s gone manic at work. Their child is off school sick and they are very concerned about the doctor’s report. They have got sick themselves and staying in bed until their temperature has gone down.If you keep in mind that it’s not all about you and that your potential client may actually have more pressing issues to deal with than the discussions you having with them, they may welcome the reminder and glad of the opportunity not to miss out on the offer you’ve got for them.
3) Following up doesn’t always have to be about the sale. Sending a simple Thank You on a back of postcard or emailing a link to a relevant article you’ve just seen can be the perfect excuse for staying in touch. If you make it all about the sale all of the time, your desperation may come across and shoo the client away.
4) Have an email marketing system set up. Whether you send out a fortnightly email newsletter or have a specific autoresponder sequence set up, add your potential client to that list so they can get the value of your expertise. Again, if all your follow ups are about making the sale, it may get very irritating for them.
5) Don’t wait for Christmas to send them cards. Once a year, our postal service gets inundated with seasonal greetings. And so do your clients. Why spend money on cards and postage, only to get lost in the dozens of other follow ups from your competitors. There are plenty of other occasions throughout the year that are worth celebrating; Valentine’s Day, Easter, New Year and probably plenty of unusual National Days that could merit a card that says “Hi … remember me?”
6) Set up a system. Whether it’s a basic excel spreadsheet or adding dates to your calendar or even subscribing to a specific CRM tool such as Capsule or Salesforce, you absolutely need to have a system set up so you don’t rely on memory. When you start up in business, it can feel easy to keep track of a few calls here and there. But when your follow ups span across the year and some clients may take months and months to buy from you, you mustn’t rely on scraps of paper and notebooks.
7) Know that a “NO” now can often the start of a beautiful partnership. It can take a long time for someone to know, like and trust you enough to buy your services. They may say being saying no to you right now, but over time that can change to a yes. So be careful not to throw a sulk and take the rejection personally as a “NO” may actually mean “NO, Not right now … but keep in touch and we may re-consider.
Remember, persistence is everything. Never be worried about being desperate if you can genuinely help your clients. If you know you are a good fit for each other and that they have expressed an interest in what you can do for them, be strategic in your follow up process and you will reap your rewards.
Time to hear from you. How do you manage your follow up calls? Or do you dare to admit that follow ups rarely happen?
Leave a comment below as I love to read your thoughts and ideas, too.
by Karen Skidmore | 09,14 | Marketing Articles
When a few of your long term clients – you know the ones; the ones you bank on being there for the next few months – begin to “evaluate” their current contracts, it is easy to feel a sense of anxiety.
Perhaps your motivation and confidence starts to wobble as one after another potential lead says “Thanks, but no.” Your diary starts to look a little empty and you begin to wonder when exactly you are going to make your next sale.
When business is good, you are king of the hill. But when business gets tough, it is easy to start feeling a tad nervous. And when these nerves turn to panic, it can really start to filter in to your marketing; which makes the lack of business leads only get worse.
Why? Because the 2 biggest mistakes you can make when business gets tough is to reduce your prices and to widen your market.
I’ll come back to reducing prices at another time, but let’s deal with the widening of your market first. I suppose it kinda makes sense to feel you must widen your market if your business leads are drying up. After all, you want more clients.
But never get confused with wanting new clients with wanting to have any-new-client-who-will-have-you.
When you start to widen your market, it is easy to lose your focus, your speciality and your ability to compete with other businesses.
The more focused you are in who you want to attract and the more targeted your marketing is, the more successful you will be in winning more clients and customers. And if there is one thing that you are more likely to win over other cheaper competitors is by being a specialist.
When you try to win any-new-client-who-will-have-you, your marketing starts to become spray and pray. The more letters, emails, calls and Facebook posts you can get out, the more chance you feel someone will come back to you. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case.
Here are the 3 core problems caused by spray and pray marketing; and the solution to each one.
Sending everyone to the same website
Problem – the attention span of your average website visitor is less than a couple of seconds. People are not as patient online and scan web pages, rather than read them. And social media has only made our attention span online get worse and worse.
If they can’t see the right information for them, they hit the back button. And if you are sending everyone, online and offline, to the same home page, are you giving that potential new client the right information to make a decision on whether to buy from you?
How do you know if you have this problem? – check your web stats and look at your bounce rate. This will show you how many people click away from your site after viewing only one page. An average bounce rate is 50% so if you are way up in the 70 or 80 percentile, there’s possible a problem. Even if your website is your blog, if most people are coming on over to read just one article and then leave, then you’ve potentially got some work to do to encourage interested people to stick around and act on what you’ve got to offer.
If you sell products and services online, you will also keep track of your conversion rates. How many visitors do you need to attract to your website to make one sale? And yes, it can be quite a depressing figure when you realise that it may take 10,000 visitors for 1 person to buy your £97 online course … gulp!
Solution – Having a separate website for each of your target clients is ideal, but not always practical.
Start off by having separate pages relevant for different clients and give out a dedicated web address to the right clients. For example a training business could have www.yourwebsite.com/retail if they have decided to target this sector. When a potential retail client clicks through to this page, they can read about the problems retail businesses have, what specific solutions are on offer to them and what targeted results can be achieved. There is a greater chance that this training company is going to be perceived to be a specialist in the retail sector, thus improve their chances of winning business.
The option you have is to make use of one of the large number of squeeze page products out there (LeadPages is my current favourite, must-have web tool). This makes it very easy (for a non-techy who does not understand HTML coding) to set up and create specific pages for your targeted marketing campaigns.
For example, if you are running a campaign to promote a free event such as a webinar, you don’t want people to have to be stumbling around your website and getting lost in the navigation. Or, even worse, bouncing off your home page because they can’t see your event (remember the split second it takes for someone to scan a page … they will no patient to look carefully for your beautifully designed “click here” graphic.)
Send people direct to a specific landing page (and yes, you can use a standalone page from your LeadPages account to do this) and not only will you get better conversion, you will have accurate stats to work out how well that page is converting.
Sending everyone the same letter & brochure
Problem – 1,000 letters and brochures are sent out to a mailing list which results in not one enquiry. Expensive!
How do you know you’ve got this problem? – When the invoices for the printing and postage start hurting your bottom line.
So few small business owners even consider using direct mail any more because the fear of wasting their time and money. And yet, direct mail is still one of the communications channels that work … social media and email may be cheaper but they will never replace the effectiveness of a well written letter, leaflet or postcard. If none of your competitors are doing, then you’ve got a unbelievable competitive advantage is you decide to embrace snail mail.
Solution – Break down your database in to smaller lists, for example by industry sector, location or common problem. Spend time modifying your letter so it is written specifically to that person. The aim is to have each person read that letter feeling that it is written personally for them. It focuses exactly on a problem they may have and gives them a clear call to action that is desirable enough for them to act on.
Save your printing costs and do away with a fancy smancy brochure, unless of course you sell a high-end product or service and your target client would expect something glossy. And keep the mailing small enough so that you (or someone in your team) can follow up each and every letter by phone.
Follow up is key to direct mail success and it will help you identify what’s working … and what’s not!
Sending everyone the same email
Problem – Emails are being ignored and possibly even reported as spam. Open rates have been slowly decreasing over the past 5 years. Email is by no means dead (as some social media gurus like to claim LOL) but you have to work bloody hard to grab reader’s attention in their inboxes; especially when you consider how small a screen most people read their emails on now.
How do you know you’ve got this problem? – If you are using a subscription based email service, check your open rates. It may be easier to send every email to the whole of your database, but if it is resulting in your subscribers ignoring you, you are in danger of damaging your brand. Remember, useful emails to some may be spam to others.
Again, break down your database in to smaller lists. Can you define people by the products they have bought? Or where they have subscribed from? Is there an opportunity to make a special offer to just those who signed up for a free report you offered last year?
This is where I spend most of my time personalising and splitting down my communications. It pays to be sending some emails to just 100 people and other emails (sometimes making exactly the same offer but presented in a different way) to 1,000.
If you want a lesson on targeted emails, just buy something from Amazon or Tesco 🙂
So no more spray and pray OK?!
Spray and pray marketing may feel like the right thing to do when you desperate to find more clients. But don’t! Take the time to focus on your target clients; focus on their common problems and focus on providing a solution that is right for them.
Targeting to specific clients is the key to successful small business marketing.
What do you do about targeting your marketing? Perhaps you’ve always sprayed and prayed. I would love to know your thoughts and comments. And also your questions about this too.
So please leave a comment below.
by Karen Skidmore | 01,14 | Marketing Articles
Have you sat down and worked out where you want to be this time next year? Goal setting and creating your vision is one of those “must-do” steps when starting up or growing your business to the next level.
But did you know that the big vision alone just won’t work?
Vision boards, mission statements, your dream business … all fun ways of helping you think big. But leave it that and you will often be left confused and befuddled.
This particularly applies to coaches or those of you who have been coached.
A coaching relationship often starts with focusing on the end result. “Where do you see yourself this time next year?” or “If we were to meet again in 12 months, what successes would you like to tell me about?”
I’ve even used these questions myself with my own clients, as well as with myself.
The problem is that sticking with your big vision could end up leaving overwhelmed. Dreaming it big could very easily mean that your goal feels like a mountain to climb and when you try to get stuck in to your day-to-day routine, you don’t really know what you should be actually doing.
It’s exactly the situation Sarah has found herself in, who is joining me on the next GID Marketing Programme. And it was she who inspired this article today. Getting caught up in the big vision allows you to dream and think big … but when it comes to working out what you’ve got to do today, tomorrow and the next day – that’s when you find yourself drifting.
Breaking down that big vision is critical to ensuring you get on and take action.
Success was never built on wishful thinking, after all! And you know deep down that you can’t just “build it and he will come”. You have to take your big vision and break down so you know exactly what to take action on.
And here’s how to do it.
Your Big Vision Goal
First, start with your overall goal and mission. Where do you see your business being this time next year? Are you focusing on turnover, profit, the number of customers or something else?
By all means, have fun creating your vision board. Write out your mission statement. Create posters to hang up around your office or record yourself so you listen to your goal each and every morning. Whatever floats your boat and helps you stay motivated. There are lots of ways you can do this.
But make sure it is explicit and specific. Be clear, direct, keep it simple and quantify it.
Avoid this and you will end up with nothing more than a positive thought and great ideas. And ideas don’t make your business … it’s the implementation that does!
Your Project Goal (or Product Goal)
Once you have the long-term goal, you need to break it down into manageable projects. Projects then you can focus on for 2 to 4 months at a time.
Any longer than this and it’s real easy to lose motivation and get distracted. After all, a common characteristic of an entrepreneur like yourself is that you’ve got a short attention span.
[Squirrel!]
Take your big vision goal and work backwards to where you are now. What key milestones need to happen for you know you are on the right track? What systems or tools need to have been put in place for you to achieve your plan? Who needs to be on your team?
It’s easier to work backwards than it is to start from you are. It’s less daunting and it’s also a useful check on how realistic your big vision is. Perhaps you need longer. Perhaps you could get there quicker!
Your Project Goals can also be easily defined around your products. It’s exactly what I do.
If you are service based business, the quicker you turn your services into tangible products the better. Move on from hourly sessions and day rates and think programmes, packages and defined group of offerings. Not only does this help with your marketing focus, it helps increase your average customer spend … which is always a good thing in my books.
I’m highly motivated by date based products such as live events. Setting a launch date or booking a venue is one sure-fire way to get me motivated! So if you need a real kick up the backsie, I highly recommend this strategy.
Thus many of my Project Goals are actually Product Goals. Each product is given a specific revenue target which all work towards my big vision goal.
Your Today Goals
From your Project or Product Goals, this brings you nicely to your Today Goals. Because you have now a medium term goal to focus on (2 to 4 months) it naturally becomes easier to break down the tasks needed to get this achieved.
Again, as with breaking down your Big Vision Goal, start with the end in mind and work backwards on what needs doing.
For example, if you are launching a new product you decide on when the programme will start. Working backwards from there, you map out what needs to happen the week before everyone starts working through the first module.
When do you need to get everyone confirmed by? What information needs sending out?
Working back again, what marketing are you going to do to get people’s interest? Are you going to be running a live webinar or teleconference to kick off your promotions? Are you going to be using printed media or get an article published in a magazine?
Each bit of marketing will need different timeframes to get working – print is going to need more time than a totally virtual online promotion. So again this all provides a useful reality on what can be achieved in the time you’ve set yourself (do you need to push back the launch date or bring it forward?)
As you get more and more detail written out – and by all means use mind maps to help you as this doesn’t need to be essay style! – you can start mapping out your timeline on what needs doing on which week.
Which eventually brings you to know what you need to do today, tomorrow and next week.
Your daily to-do list stops being a never end list of crappy jobs and starts to look like a real list of Today Goals, all designed to reach your Project Goals, which ultimately help you on your way to your Big Vision Goal.
It all feels like a lot of hard work!
If this feels rather daunting and rather a lot of work involved, then yes. There’s lots to be done. But I can promise you that time spent breaking up your Big Vision Goal into Project Goals and then into Today Goals is a hell of a lot more productive than fannying around on Facebook and saying positive mantras every day.
It’s why I highly recommend you stop trying to start up or grow your business and focus on your Big Vision Goal … and start focusing on core projects or products that are going to get you to where you want to go. It’s not so hard when you get the results that you want!
