Finding Answers » Business Planning

5 Social Media Guidelines For Beginners

Erroin A. Martin — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 15:46:16 +0000

The alluring call of the Siren has finally gotten you to succumb. You are going to market your business into the social media realm. Here are five guidelines you need to follow to be successful in leveraging social media for your business.

Answer A Few Questions

We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong. – Bono

Before you begin blogging, posting, tweeting, and linking you need to answer a few questions first. The answers you provide will help you establish a focused effort that will result in a better use of resources. So take your time to really answer them before you jump feet first into social media. Here are the questions:

Why should/would anyone listen to you?
What is your persona?
What is your voice?
Where will you engage?
Who will you want to engage?
Who will execute your social media plan?
What do you want to accomplish?
When do you want to begin?
How will you measure success?
How will you listen?

Ten questions that you should have strong answers to before you begin your social media campaign. All of them are weighed equally in importance.

Is your team asking the right questions?

It is has been my experience that where companies fail is in answering the first, third, and tenth questions sufficiently. The result has been that these businesses present an unfocused approach that repeatedly misses opportunities to build a strong brand. So take your time in researching your answers.

Make A Plan

The path to success is to take massive, determined action. – Tony Robbins

You made a business plan for your business, you made a marketing plan to market your business, and you may even have your salespeople use sales plans to beat their quota. You know that plans keep your company focused and on target. So why would you not have a plan for your use of social media?

This plan should layout the overall strategy for your social media campaign. It will be particularly strong if you have successfully answered the questions above. Primarily knowing what you want to measure and how you define success in social media are key components to your plan. It will keep you focused and away from wasting time.

Your social media plan should be incorporated with your marketing, sales, and customer service plans. It should not be a stand-alone entity. Doing this will allow you to keep a

The Secret Recipe

single voice and representation of your brand not matter where your customers may engage you.

Your social media plan – like other plans for your business – should be a living document that is updated and adjusted to take advantage of opportunities for your business. It is best to break down your tactical components of your social media plan into 30-60-90 day increments. It is easier to execute in more manageable bites.

Choose The Right Platform

Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm. – Abraham Lincoln

It is important that you research which social media platform is right for your business. Do not get caught up in the initial hype surrounding some of the platforms out there. Facebook may not be where your customers are if you are a manufacturing B2B that sells ball bearings. Go where your customers and where influencers of your customers roam. This means that you might not go on to Twitter or Facebook, but set up a blog or network intensely on LinkedIn. Business is still location, location, and location.

Test With Patience And Adjust

Distance tests a horse’s strength. Time reveals a person’s character. – Chinese Proverb

You need to measure your actions.

If you are entering into social media for the first time or coming back to it after a failed attempt, remember that patience is a virtue. Social media is not a quick sale or a fast customer service resolution. Social media is about being social and building relationships. In essence social media is about what you and I do everyday at the office, with our customers, and how we make friends. All of the things we have learned in the real world apply in social media: it takes time to get to know someone.

The great thing about that time is it allows you to test ideas, messaging, and service models while receiving feedback (that can be brutally honest) about your products. If you enter into this medium with honest intentions you will be rewarded with insights that you would have most likely been overlooked.

Measure Your Effort

People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results – Albert Einstein

When you have established what it is that you want to measure in your social media campaign – measure it. It could be gaining new followers, subscribers, fans, or customers. Whatever it may be, the measurement you have selected is the best indicator of your efforts and if they are in alignment with your plan. This is the same as how your measure your sales versus a quota or the return on a capital investment your business has made. Otherwise how do you know what you are doing is correct?

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being. – Ghandi

Odysseus had his crew put wax in their ears so they would not row his ship upon the deadly rocks where the Sirens lived. Only he heard their song. Your business needs to have the same focus.

When you decide to enter into social media as a marketing tool it can be easy for everyone to want to be involved. That will tear you business apart and waste valuable resources. Your effort needs to be focused.

There is no need to rush when it comes to social media. Learn, observe, research, plan, and then execute a campaign that focuses on building strong relationships. You will be rewarded.

Success Secret: Put Your Customer At The Center

Erroin A. Martin — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:22:13 +0000

Want to beat the competition? Put your customers at the center of your organization. Make them the CEO of your business. Doing so will help you respond faster, launch innovative products/services, and build win-win relationships.

Every company has an organizational chart, whether it is formal or informal, that depicts the hierarchy and the roles responsible for decision-making. In some cases, depending on the size of your company, this can mean layers upon layers of differing levels within the business. Typically the more layers there are, the longer the decision times become. Nothing new… right?

It Is More Than Just The Slogans!

If you answered yes, who can blame you? That is how most companies operate because the customer is removed from the entire organizational compass. The customer is forced to speak with automated call centers or contracted service representatives. Rarely does the customer speak with anyone who is part of the “Org Chart.” The customer is there to serve not be served.

Disagree with me? Look at your own company. Where does your customer fit in when it comes to your organization?

The old silo structure was meant to respond to twentieth century production and distribution problems. Sure those marketing people would run surveys etc. but that was to make sure the delivery of the products and services created from the R&D department got purchased and delivered. Customer feedback was really based around messaging, quality, and satisfaction. Rarely was it about product input, store design, and/or strategic decision making for the company.

That way of thinking means that there are a lot assumptions being made. Even with all the research done by mining the abundant amount of data out there, decisions under the old organizational structure are made with assumptions. Input by the customer is subjected to results from surveys and focus groups.

You can remove the assumptions from the equation by placing your customer at the center of your organization. Doing this means that decisions are made with one purpose in mind: does it meet my customers’ needs?

How To Meet The Mission? Keep it SLIM!

Stay in business.

You must be in business to service your customers’ needs. So if a decision makes it difficult for you to stay in business… it violates the purpose of why you are in business and should not be made.

Listen to your customers.

There is a lot of information from a ton of people about listening to your customers. So much so that you do not want to listen to it any more yourself! What I am talking about here is bringing them into the decision making process and removing assumptions. Which makes sense if you are placing the customer at the center of your organization. It is no longer what is in the best interest for the company… it is what is in the best interest for the customer.

A great example of doing exactly this is Best Buy. They discovered that their stores were mostly frequented by women instead of men, that their customers wanted friendly and helpful staff that were not compensated by commission (read pushy sales people), and help setting up the complicated electronics. This lead to store redesigns, the Geek Squad, and staff that is knowledgeable in multiple departments of their stores. Don’t think it works? Have fun shopping at Circuit City!

Integrate your customers into your organization.

Placing your customer at the center of your organization means that everyone who is part of your company, from the CEO to the lowest paid employee, answers to them. Every department works for the customer. While you maybe nodding your head reading this, if your company is still operating in silos then your customer is not part of your organization at all.

Integration is about building a business around your customers and their needs. Business that are built like this survive economic downturns, are faster in launching innovative products/services, and have greater loyalty. Apple and Wal-Mart come to mind as two companies that integrate the customer into their organizations. Both deliver vastly different products/services that fulfill their customers’ needs. You cannot deny that both are tremendously successful.

Make customer communication easy.

Social media makes it easier to communicate and learn more from your customers. It is more than reacting to bad public relations, a la Southwest Airlines, or jumping on a customer request, a la Best Buy. It is about participating in a conversation that can give you valuable insight into how your products and services are being used:

Are they being used for their intended purpose?
Is there an innovative way never considered before in using the products?
What needs are not being met?

All of that information can be found for free on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Yet, to get all of that information you have to make it easy to communicate with your customer. We all hate the voicemail hell that one must go through to interact with a human being hidden somewhere in a non-disclosed bunker. Why make your customer go through the same thing when it comes to social media?

Easy communication means that you are going to get the good with the bad, but in the end it means that you are going to build a long-lasting flow of valuable information. Besides, it makes sense to listen to your boss and we are talking about making the customer your boss!

Customers Need To Be Part Of The Equation

This is the twenty-first century. Although the way most businesses run, you would not know it. You can capitalize on that weakness by making your customer the centerpiece of your business. You do not make _____, you help customers overcome ______, meet _________, or build _______. Your boss in the end is your customer. Without customers your paycheck does not get paid.

Where are your customers in your organization?

About the author:

Erroin A. Martin is a Business Advocate with the Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC, a business coaching and consultancy provider for business owners, executives, and entrepreneurs. He has fifteen years experience working within the pharmaceutical, manufacturing, natural resources, medical devices, software, technology, business services, and agriculture industries in various levels of leadership across six continents. He has led diverse teams in sales, marketing, planning, and in the Army. He currently coaches business leaders and physicians in the tools needed to plan for their success. Learn more about the Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC at www.vongehrconsulting.com or call +1 203 433 8079. You can follow him on Twitter at @Erroin

The Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC, was founded by Erroin A. Martin to provide business coaching, business consulting, and other services to companies both large and small. The primary goal is to have his clients be passionate about their business and reach the unachievable.

4 Steps Your Business Should Be Doing Now

Erroin A. Martin — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 21:33:21 +0000

Growth Happens Everywhere

Getting a business of any size ready to seize upon the available opportunities of a turn around in the economy is tricky. With budgets tight and the need to keep cash available, it can be hard for a business to align its resources in the right way. Freezing everything places the business – your business – at greater risk of not being able to take advantages of opportunities when conditions change.

In a recent issue of the Harvard Business Review, they looked at what it takes for businesses to get ready for the rebound. The authors discovered that businesses that invest in areas that determine both long and short term growth (like expansions, R&D, and new product launches) have a greater chance of storming out the gates when the economy rebounds than those that do not. These businesses stuck with calculated strategies that stayed focused on growth while their industry and competition ran for the hills. Companies that failed to plan for the rebound never made it out alive from the recessions that they were in.

Here is what your business should be doing right now:

Review your business. Look at where you are exactly at right now with a top down review that looks at financials, departments, products, and people. There has to be no sacred cows, everything is up for review.
Remove waste. Believe it or not, there are still businesses out there that are leaking cash through small amounts of waste. A great example is the expense account. While tightened for the need to preserve cash, it is still the foremost area where waste occurs. Typically in the food arena – your employees should have really good reasons as to why they are eating out everyday on the company dime. Is it providing value or just a cost of doing business? If it is the latter, time to find another means of engaging your clients. Be vigilant and save for when the good times do come.
Reward resources. Cash, funding, and other capital should be given as reward for areas of the business that can provide both long and short-term growth. Since your business will be scaling back budgets in other areas, it can become a cause of concern when spending is increased in other departments. Your business should put a value on these resources by making your teams compete for growth. The best ideas that will set the business up for success get rewarded.
Risk prudently. This does not mean be ultra-conservative where you place your resources for the rebound that is going to come. It means once you have reviewed your business, removed waste, and rewarded resources you keep tabs on the progress of those funds. It also means that you have to be willing to invest in risk to receive the growth you want to have.

A great example of a company that is implementing the four R’s above is Starbucks (SBUX). In a recent shareholders meeting Starbucks discussed how they reviewed their business, restructured to remove waste, and are rewarding their resources in area of prudent risk in the form of new products and buying back stock. The success of their plan has allowed the company to issue a dividend for the first time.

The lessons are pretty clear. For any business – especially your business – to survive you have to be willing to focus on growth, even in a recession. You have to be willing to risk going against the conventional wisdom to be ready to exploit the opportunities that will come when the rebound happens.

If you are not prepared, you better get cracking!

What is your business doing to get ready for the rebound?

About the author:

Be A Business Lion: Listen To Your Market

Erroin A. Martin — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 15:24:52 +0000

Three hundred sixty-five days a year. Twenty-four hours a day. Every second the market is alive humming with noise. It is a noise that is filled with the cheers of successful sales, the woes of industries in crisis, the shouts of joy from a product launch, and the gentle weeping over a company’s losses. That noise is information the market is shouting out into the world non-stop. Information in its rawest form that when listened to can tell you where opportunities and threats lie. For while the market may be pumping out what seems like endless noise, if you listen… there is a rhythm.

This Lion Is Listening. Are you?

To be a business lion it is essential that you listen to the market. It will tell you which price point is successful for the products and services you offer. The market will tell you what is really valued or needed. The market will tell you whom is poaching on your territory and who is not worthy wasting energy chasing after. All the information is open to a business lion who has trained themselves to listen.

Listening to the market requires that you be quiet and actively focused on what it is you want to know. There is so much information and so many means to access it from the market that it can be overwhelming or enticing to follow certain rabbits down their holes. A business lion knows this. A business lion understands this. A business lion is active in listening for its interests to the lion’s business. Nothing more. Nothing less. Lions do not chase rabbits.

Therefore the business lion never hires someone else to listen to the market for them. The lion knows that to do so would be to place a filter over the raw noise of the market. Doing so will lead to the blindness of the lion to threats and missed opportunities.

The business lion trains their ears to focus on specifics it wants to know from the market. The lion does this by naming what those interests are, researching where the market will emit noise about those interests, and targeting its ears to listen for sounds about those interests. The process is always the same even if the lion changes the name its interests.

The business lion knows that the market communicates information about the past and the present, but never the future. When the lion listens to the market it is a like a ray with and end at that time stretching forever backwards. The information the lion gathers can only aid in the making of a decision but never in the outcome that will follow. Knowing this helps the lion to be selective in its decisions and take appropriate risks.

The business lion is always training its ears to listen to the market. How are you training yours?

About the author:

9 Realities About Social Media For Your Business

Erroin A. Martin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:07:33 +0000

If you have been sitting on the fence or simply putting your toes in the water when it comes to social media, I am here to tell you that it is time to jump in. The water is warm – heck it is actually hot! You should dive right in! You need to for your business to survive. Why? That is where your customers and influencers of customers are.

Now… that being said… you need to understand the realities behind social media and control your expectations. Here are 9 realities you must know before you begin your dive into social media:

9. You Can’t Build Without Reading The Instructions

Directions Help

Unless you are my engineering friend who tends to through those pesky instructions out and always ends up with pieces left over, the rest of us have to read them. The same goes for social media. Learning where to be and how to interact is important or you run the risk of being frustrated.

Amber Naslund, who writes the Altitude Branding Blog, has done a lot of the hard work and rounded up a Best Of Social Media Learning post. I recommend this as a must read before you even begin. You will have better results and a better return on your investment of time.

8. You must have a plan

Using social media for marketing your business and building a strong relationship with your customers requires that you have a plan. Your largest investment in setting up the accounts and participating is your time. As the old adage goes, “Time equals money.” Just like if you were to buy advertising in a newspaper or on television, you are going to have a plan when it comes to engaging with people on social media. This article written by Lon S. Cohen on Mashable.com, discusses seven items any enterprise should consider, makes it clear that you should have a plan.

This article by Cindy King, gives you seven ways to plan your social media so you can avoid the time wasting trap.

7. You Need To Be Where Your Customers Are

Well it seems that you cannot escape a truism when it comes to business: Location, Location, and Location. Just like it matters where you put your store, it matters where you choose to allocate your resources when it comes to social media. If you are in the waste disposal industry should you be on Twitter? Well, it depends on the message

Should You Be Here?

that you are communicating, but most likely not.

This article by Redhead Writing asks the question “Should You Be On Twitter?” She has got some important questions that you must answer before you even get started.

6. You Need A Blog

First, a blog that is tied directly into your main website is a great way to feed the search engines and helps your SEO. (Any SEO marketing company will tell you this.) Second, a blog helps build your authority in your particular marketplace and the products/services you sell. You know them better than anyone so why not write about them?

If you are a small business, there is a ton of data that demonstrates how blogs help your business. Such as:

Small businesses have a larger reach on twitter through blogs

Active business blogs increase organic search (free) by 7 times over non-blogging businesses

Businesses that blog experience a 126% increase in leads

The above articles are from HubSpot. Before you begin blogging, you should ask yourself if you are ready to blog. When you determine that you are, make a plan and write. Do not worry about topics as once you start writing you will find that there are a ton of topics you write about when it comes to your business. This article by Denise Wakeman gives you thirteen ideas for getting topics and sparking your creativity. She also has a post that shows you how easy it is to set up a blog in ten easy steps.

5. You Need To Measure Your Activity

Activity Is Up, But What About Profits?

Like any marketing plan you want to measure the results of your activity. There are number of tools you can use and most of them are free. You need to make sure you are measuring the right metrics. Are they conversions? Are they site hits? Are they comments to your blog? The list can be endless and you can end up measuring the wrong ones. The good news is that this article by Tom Webster Social Media Monitoring 201, helps you sort out the right metrics.

4. You Need To Incorporate Video

Most of social media is written. Tweets, blogs, and posts to Facebook are typically written. Yet one of the most powerful mediums that can engage a very wide audience is video. It does not require much capital and can help your product, business, and/or brand explode into an untold number of potential clients.

Coke and Lego have embraced the power of video as they continue to engage with their customers. This article by Peter Wylie, gives you five ways to make a video a social experience.

3. You Will Have Costs

Social media is currently seen as a free means to advertise. It is not free at all. You are going to invest time. Whether it is your time or an employee’s time, you are going to invest it. That time equals money. While you are not paying to place information online, you are paying. Once you understand this, then you will be in a better position to engage with your customers. This article by Shelly Kramer, demonstrates how a company, like Starbucks, understood this principle and increased sales.

2. You Need To Participate

Advertising is about perfection. Delivering the perfectly crafted message to the perfect audience at the perfect time. The medium interrupts, speaks out, and provokes a response by the audience. Yet, it does not engage the audience. This article by Molly Cantrell-Kraig discusses how social media is not advertising, but instead a forum to participate in a discussion between the brand and its customers. By participation this means that there needs to be a person behind the tweets, posts, and blogs. This means that your company has to be open to both the accolades and the complaints. This means that you are not going to have total control but you will learn and build up a huge balance in your relationship account.

1. You Will Not Immediately Make Millions

Participating and engaging in social media is not a get rich quick scheme. It is a means to build respect, authority, and a strong relationship with your customers. Social media allows you to showcase your talents. Social media allows you to find customers that really want to buy your services. Social media in the end is a community that you are part of and if you are a value to… you will make an impressive return on your investment. Like anything else it is going to take time. Just to measure your expectations against reality you should read how Amber Naslund made $100k with Twitter. Then you should read the 25 realities behind social media by Tom Nixon.

Are you ready to jump in? The water is hot enough! Your business will thank you and your customers will become loyal fans that will rave about you. Weigh your expectations against reality and engage your customers in the social media realm!

I am sure there are other realities about social media. What have I missed? How would you explain the realities of social media? What other resources are out there?

About the author:

Avoid The Activity Trap – Provide Value

Erroin A. Martin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 21:08:32 +0000

A business to survive has to have results. Typically these results are measured by the ultimate measurement: cash. The difficulty for any business in understanding this measurement is if it is a direct relation to activity or something other. Most businesses will have the belief that cash is generated solely by activity. Therefore many sales plans, business plans, and marketing plans are created around activity and not around value.

“People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results.” – Albert Einstein

Activity Is Up, But What About Profits?

At first glance any businessperson worth their salt would deride the above paragraph as being nonsense. To generate cash you have to have activity. That activity can be in the form of a sale, signature on a contract, or traffic to a particular website. The businessperson who thinks this is correct. The closing of the sale, the signing of a contract, and the decision to visit a website are all activities. The problem for the businessperson is really distinguishing if these activities are of value to the customer. Typically this is not the case when it comes to many businesses.

Let’s take, for example, the founder of Mint.com. This individual competes against Microsoft Money and Intuit’s Quicken. Both of those software platforms are major movers in the marketplace of personal finance. So what makes a web-based application like Mint.com different? Well for one, mint.com is focused around giving you “the user” quick information about your financial status. It is also designed to give you the information you need to make sound decisions for your financial future. It is as a program providing value. The competition to Mint.com are more focused around how long you spend on particular windows or other GUIs in their programs. The competitors to Mint.com are focused on activity and not real value to you to the consumer.

The good news is at least it’s activity driven. The bad news is there is no value to anyone.

Still not convinced there is a difference? Well, let’s take a look at social media. In another blog post by Amber Naslund, she uses a quote from Albert Einstein. This quote states, “People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results.” The same is true when a business embraces social media. The belief of the business is that social media is activity driven platform. They tweet and get followers. They build a fan page and get fans. The more active you are the greater results your are going to get. This is a fallacy. Why? Well what is one of the chief complaints when it comes to social media? That people are blabbing on about their nonsensical lives. That right there is activity with no value to the consumer of the information. So if you are a business and you are going to spout out nonsensical information about your business, you are just as guilty as those individuals who comment about what their cats are doing. The good news is at least it’s activity driven. The bad news is there is no value to anyone.

So how can you as a businessperson make sure that you do not get caught and in the activity trap?

First, make sure that any metrics being measured against the plan are value driven. This is easier said than done. Any plan, whether it is for business, sales, or marketing has to have metrics to measure its progress. Yet, a value driven metric is one that returns an exponential response from the customer. For example, take a look at Domino’s pizza in Chicago. They have a social media plan to communicate deals, promotions, and answer complaints. The metrics behind this plan is to foster a strong relationship between the franchises and their customers. The value behind the activity is a strong communication from Domino’s and a demonstration that they listen to their customers. The results are continued purchases and a strengthened relationship.

Second, avoid the temptation to award only activity. Many plans measure the activity of teams and/or individuals. For sales, it can be the number of calls a salesperson makes on customers. For marketing, it can be the number of impressions and/or responses to “calls to action” from campaigns. Both of these are important, but they are not the end goal of any business. The end goal is profits. The reward should be given to the salesperson that generates the largest margin of profit for an organization. It should be an award to the marketing team that drives business with the least amount of cost. These are viable propositions for any business. A salesperson who can generate millions of dollars of business with one or two sales calls is more valuable than a salesperson who generates 100,000 dollars worth of business from 100 sales calls. If you measure activity then the second salesperson would be awarded over the more valuable salesperson. Award the value not the activity.

It is difficult to balance activity and value. The temptation of many companies is to double down on their activity. They feel it will generate a ton of results. The reality is that it generates more activity with more costs. When companies get caught in this trap value becomes an afterthought. The result is a lower profit margin and a loss of highly valued customers.

How Do Make Sure You Avoid The Activity Trap?

About the author:

Free Your Mind When You Are Planning

Erroin A. Martin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:45:06 +0000

When you enter the planning phase – whether it is business planning, launching a product, or marketing plan – you cannot be limited. You need to be willing to explore untried paths and find inventive ideas. There should be no sacred cows and you have to put blinders over the “not invented hear” crowd. This video discusses what goes into great planning and how you need to free your mind.

Watch Free Your Mind For Planning in Educational & How-To | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Coaching Concept: Execution Is About Depth

Erroin A. Martin — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:55:41 +0000

Many businesses and entrepreneurs are great at making plans. While it is one of the toughest things to do initially, it is easy to create plans once you get the hang of them. Where things go wrong is the failure in execution of those plans. The problem is trying to execute too many things at the same time spreading resources out with no depth. Success comes from practicing and executing on your strengths, which are only a few items, with intense depth. Therefore you are executing a mile deep and an inch wide.

Watch Execution Is A Mile Deep Process in Educational & How-To | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

What Have been your experiences?

30 60 90 Days To Execute

Erroin A. Martin — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:59:11 +0000

In my previous blog about business planning, I discussed the method of backwards planning. Whether you are planning a marketing campaign, a social media initiative, a sales plan, or even something unheard of yet… it is best to execute those items in manageable pieces.

…break up the tasks into those easily executable, manageable chunks.

It is best first to understand that backwards planning sets your milestones. It helps your lay down the timeframe expectations for the various pieces of your plan. Now you have to execute it. This is where the principle of the 30 60 90 day execution comes in.

Strategy & Planning

There is no secret sauce to this. No eleven herbs and spices. No special cola formula to using a 30 60 90 execution plan. You look at your backwards plan and you break up the tasks into those easily executable, manageable chunks.

Where people go wrong in using a 30 60 90 day execution plan is when they overload the first thirty days with too many tasks to complete. What was once a manageable tool is now filled with traps of failure of “too much.”

…you need to cross off what is completed and update it at a regular interval.

The next area where business executives tend to fail using this execution plan is that they forget it is a rolling plan. Once you make it the clock starts. The thirty days starts now and when they pass, what was on the 60-day portion becomes the 30-day portion and the 90 the 60.

To ensure that you do not stack too much in the first thirty days break it into three buckets of what needs to get done. So think of the 30 as what needs to get done now. Think of 60 as what can get done later. Think of 90 as what can only be accomplished after 30 and 60 get accomplished. This helps you make sure that you do not stack too much in the first thirty days.

Remember backwards planning is assigning a date and time of when you want to accomplish a particular goal, finish a project, or meet a deadline.

To avoid the second pitfall, forgetting that this plan is rolling, you need to cross off what is completed and update it at a regular interval. Every month is definitely not a proper interval. If you do that you are not really looking at or utilizing your plan. Every day is obviously overkill. It is best to pick a day in the week. I am keen to Sundays as this is when I begin looking at what needs to be accomplished for the upcoming workweek. Sunday I review what I completed (or not, I am human) and update my execution plan for the next 30 60 90 days.

Steps To Success

One of the keys to making this work is that you need to cross off items as you complete them. It keeps you looking at your plan and not letting things pile up on you.

Remember backwards planning is assigning a date and time of when you want to accomplish a particular goal, finish a project, or meet a deadline. You are working from that point in time backwards to where you are now so that you can align your resources, assign teams, and avoid unnecessary tasks. Think of this as a walking the field before the big game or match. You are getting a lay of the land before you actually play. The 30 60 90 day execution plan is a forward looking business planning tool that works within the frame work of the backwards plan to meet your major milestones. Think of this as the actual plays you are executing during the game.

I am always interested in know how other people plan and execute their work, how do you plan?

About the author:

Erroin A. Martin is a Business Advocate with the Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC, a coaching and consultancy provider for businesses and medical practices. He has over eleven years experience working within the pharmaceutical, manufacturing, technology, business services, and agriculture industries in various levels of leadership across six continents. He has led diverse teams in sales, marketing, planning, and in the Army. He currently coaches business leaders and physicians in the tools needed to plan for their success. Learn more about the Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC at www.vongehrconsulting.com or call +1 203 433 8079. You can follow him on Twitter at @Erroin

Plan Your Business – Backwards

Erroin A. Martin — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:58:59 +0000

Happy New Year! In an effort to join the chorus of blogs, posts, and tweets wishing you success and tips for planning for your resolutions, I am going to add a bit of twist. When it comes to your business, especially when it comes to your business plans you should build into this New Year the concept of backwards planning.

Backwards planning is a method.

What is this planning backwards you ask? Well, it is a method used when you have specific date(s) in mind. Let’s say you are launching an herbal and alternative health business. You plan to hold a Grand Opening for your new business venture on the first of April. You are smart, you know what items you need to make this Grand Opening a success.

Business Planning Meeting

You need advertisements, fliers, mailers, business cards, a website, press releases, and etc. Without adequately knowing how long each of the above items can take to completion or believing that everything can get quickly accomplished before the big day can lead you, and your business, to a very poor start. So, you apply the principles of backwards planning. You research how long each piece of your Grand Opening will take. You take into consideration back ups just in case something cannot be completed on time. With this information in your hands you can assign the resources needed to make this Grand Opening the best loudest mother of all Grand Openings ever experienced.

To plan effectively you need to know how long everything takes.

The above was just a glossing over of what is involved. Here are the nitty gritty details to backwards planning.

With the Grand Opening date set, as we said April 1^st, and the information on how long each part of the project can take you from your research (see figure 1), here is an example of what backwards planning looks like:

Figure 1

April 1 – Grand Opening

March 27 – Advertising Campaign Begins

March 29 – Wave 4 Mailings

March 25 – Wave 3 Mailing

March 15 – Wave 2 Mailings

March 1 – Wave 1 Mailings (Save the Date)

March 1 – Website launched

February 22 – Final Mailing List Delivered

February 15 – Mailing List Broken into Waves

February 8– Proof Mailing List

February 1 – Mailing List Building Begins

Now of course actions would be assigned to members of your team and capital resources determined ahead of time to keep costs down. There would also be more detail. With a calendar in hand (which is an essential tool for backwards planning) you can mark down when the events or milestones should be met.

It allows you to clearly see targets.

To refresh, the concept of backwards planning is that you work backwards from the date you want to achieve a specific goal or task. It allows you to clearly see when targets should or must be met and allows you to quickly assign resources to the most prioritized tasks. The best part of this business planning tool is that it allows you to get rid of the non-essential items that waste time and resources.

Goal for Business Plans

Unlike GANTT charts, which plan items in a forward looking fashion, therefore allowing items to creep in and cause delays, this tool is easy to grasp and use.

How do you plan for your business?

About the author:

Erroin A. Martin is a Business Advocate with the Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC, a coaching and consultancy provider for businesses and medical practices. He has over eleven years experience working within the pharmaceutical industry in various levels of leadership across six continents. He currently coaches business leaders and physicians in the tools needed to plan for their success. Learn more about the Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC at www.vongehrconsulting.com or call +1 203 433 8079. You can follow him on Twitter at @Erroin