5 Elements of a Successful Marketing Plan

1. Has a Big picture overview - where you’re coming from and where you are going to is the foundation of your marketing plan. Let’s  say a year from now, what results do you want to have happened? Looking at the big picture, not on ly the final destination is important but aslo the 2 to 5 big accomplishments throughtout the year. The can be the Quantum Leaps you consider as a sheer dream now but which need to take place in order your end goal to be achieavable.

2. Has a detailed description of the small steps - the few quantum leaps you’ve identified as neccessary to take place so that your plan reaches the finishing line usually have lots of small sub-steps which follow one another. For example – if your Giant step is Marketing, then you follow a step-by-step process to market your product, service or idea. That process is of the form: do step 1, when you complete it, do step 2, when you complete it, do step 3 etc. If your Giant step is to sell out your products or your available time slots for your services, then you follow a different business process which is of the same step-by-step format.

 

3. Has smart strategies to go from one to another - Completing one step doesn’t authomatically mean that you are on the next step already. When you do your part of the work , you are but your prospecs or may not be. So, to make sureboth parties are on the same page,  whole set of strategies for the different feed-backs we can get from a client or a merketing campaign needs to be in the place as a support structure that ensures that whatever comes our way, we have a way to handle it. Of course, we can’t prepare for absolutely everything, but as they say: prior preparation prevents failure.

 

4. Has a masterplan – Highly efficient plan takes into account in a very detailed way all that the business owner expects to do 6 months ahead in any given day. Having sets of strategies to go fromstep to step in a  gracefull and genuine way is imply not enough. If you have 10 steps to get from where you are now to where you want to be tomorrow, then you need to create sets of strategies for leaps from step to step for all 10 steps so that you ensure that you plan will be completed and executed properly.

 

5.  Prepare for the tasks at hand way in advance - ok, you are your own boss and you struggle between wanting to work as much as possible on your busines so that it succeeds and the personal, family and leisure time. If you’ve completed all 4 steps above, you ahve a winning plan in your hands. Now your inner struggles can override the chance for success that the plan you created offers. What can you do about it? Automating and doing as much work in advance as possible wll do. In this way, when you are doing in February the work you have planned to do in August, then whenAugust comes, you can confidently put on your callendar: Vacation – 2 weeks – not reachable.

Still thinking this is just a dream… Try the 5 steps and we will see.

5 SIGNS That You Are Stuck in Your Business

Part of being a business owner is to overcome challenges and bring your business to the next level while focusing on keeping it alive and profitable day in and day out. But sometimes what we cant to see as challenge is actually a state of being stuck – neither moving forward nor maintaining a satisfying results status quo. Here are the signs:

1.The list of tasks keeps growing but the old tasks don’t get done. Remember – first things first. If, like most business owners who are doing it all on their own, you multitask lots of projects and tasks at the same time then ask yourself if you are advancing in any of them. If at least one of your projects is moving forward, then your business as a whole is moving forward. Even baby steps count. As long as you keep your focus on the direction and don’t bring your engines to a hal, you are making progress. On the other hand if tasks keep piling up and you find yourself saying constantly that you are busy but no tasks get auctioned on, then you just excuse yourself for not doing anything.

2.You find yourself wishing for some free time – one of the vital signs for you being stuck while operating your business is that time is never enough. Well managed business starts with managing your time effectively and realistically. A big time waster is when you don’t like to perform a particular task to delay doing it and to contemplate how little you like it a lot. Thinking is not doing – it’s time wasting.

3.Daydreaming about that great business success but not creating a road map to move from where you are right now to where you want to be – having a vision or a dream for your great success is the first step to attaining it but this step will lead you nowhere if you don’t act on it every day. Furthermore, quite often I literally hear that the plan is to do the giant steps and then get the results. What happens more often is that these giant steps consist of a number of small steps. The difference between a plan, a good plan and a great plan for the business is that a plan is to make the giant steps but overlooking the sub-processes these giant steps involve – a good plan considers the big steps and the small steps but a truly great plan has strategies to move from small steps to small step until a giant step is completed.

4.Allowing life to get in the way – there’s always something: somebody gets sick, the holiday season is coming and you need to prepare, some renovation around the house is taking place, a relocation, a change in social status – like a break up, divorce or a new relationship, you need to finish something in order to take the next steps etc. this is a huge test for all business owners because life will always keep happening. Unexpected situations or delays can and will keep coming your way. What we do with it how we respond to it is what makes a difference. If we stay focused keep going and don’t give up, then our business boat is safely anchored from the storms of life and regardless of which way the wind is blowing – our boat is not to sink.

5.Not taking care of us – how can this keep you stuck? Well, if you are new to your business, most probably you will do your best; invest all your energy, to keep it up and running. That involves less time for self case like spa, fitness, and weekend getaways. But when self care is in the luxury you don’t really need over time you start to need more time to recharge to feel less enthusiasm for all that you do and to describe yourself as overwhelmed. Even a 30 min meditation a day would do to keep you centered and away from getting stuck in your business.
Tsvetanka Petrova, CPC, Start-up Set up Coach

If you’re spiraling down the no action lane and want to zap out of it and move into the action producing results mode, I’d recommend you to ask yourself how much of your day you do what you really want to do. The course that will help you in clarifying for yourself the path of least effort and some really smart tips on how you can make sure your plan to succeed in your business doesn’t fall into the cracks is 5 signs that you are stuck in your businessTeleclass. It shares my own system to figure out how t get where I want to form where I am right now. All participants in the call receive THEIR business questions answered personally, regardless of whether they ask them live, on the call, before or after it. And of course, an MP3 recording of the call is available for download less than an hour after the call. http://bit.ly/3G3AiX

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The 5-Step sales process EVERYONE should know about

I often hear from my clients that they feel stuck they do a whole bunch of things to bring their business to a thriving fiasco but results don’t come in the way they planned and imagined they will. It turns out that quite often there is either lack of marketing activities (only sales) or (which is the majority of cases) there is a lot of marketing going on and somehow the sales activities are not there. Good marketing leads to a sale but a sale happens after the sales cycle is finished. Here’s what to do if you’re doing lots of marketing but the register don’t ring much for you:

1. Create a pull of interested people – This is your number one goal with your marketing efforts : facebook, twitter, networking events, speaking engagements. Here’s where your sales pitch or elevator speech kicks in, not to help the sale but to create awareness and interest in what you have to offer and how you help others make a difference in their lives.

2. Help prospects qualify themselves– The next step is, not surprisingly the step that hurts business owners the most because it looks like they loose business. But is it so? Realistically, not everyone who shows interest in the products or services you offer is actually going to continue being interested and that’s okay. Not only that, it is a great way for you to involve yourself into helping the interested people pre-qualify themselves to be your client or not. That really saves a lot of marketing effort you would otherwise spend on interested people who are not going to be interested for long.

3.       Play the trust game – When you want the qualified prospects to become clients of yours, realistically what you are offering is expectations. Good packaging, solutions which your prospects want to have but don’t yet and being prepared to answer all the questions your prospects might have but didn’t think about asking them to you yet is all part of the game. Think about it, we buy something (a car, a laptop, a house, etc) because we know that it works, we’ve been educated what exactly we are buying (or there is a web page that explains all that for us) and because there is a warranty – a guarantee that even after the purchase things are going to be just fine for us as buyers. Same thing when you sell your products or services.

4.       Create a win-win situation – When you sit down with the client or chat on the phone, it is a world of possibilities conversation where the real sale happens. This is where you listen to what your prospect is looking for and tweak a proposal that meets both your needs and wants and their needs and wants. This includes not only the actual work but also the expected results, and what are the steps to be taken for those results to happen. Here you needs to discuss the pricing, the details, the conditions you offer or expect, standards you abide by, what the commitments are going to be like and look like for both parties. And again, it’s best to be well prepared for that negotiation journey.

5.       Close a sale – Ok, the two of you click and it seems that you can be of great help to them and they like your personality and would enjoy working with you. Now, there is still work to be done here. This is where the prospect can give up on the product or service not because you didn’t do a good job the previous steps but because you did not help the client to work out the buyers’ remorse or buyers’ excuses. Here’s where the sales lessons need to be applied – to soft pedal the sale, to close the sale, and why not even upsale. The magic wand is in your hands. Just wave it and help your pool of interested people go though the whole sales cycle.

Tsvetanka Petrova, CPC, Start-up Set up Coach

If you’re presenting your business online via info pages and offline via brochures, I’d recommend you to re-read those presentations of your business and decide how well they help the reader to go down the sales process. The course that will assist you in learning different approaches to write your sales letters, the rules – what to pay attention to when you write them, and how to break the rules, so that you keep your individuality is the Persuasive Sales Letters that SELL without being salesy teleclass .  It covers the sales processes as per the book and how they actually work on the market, the success practices and the mistakes and pitfalls to be avoided. All participants in the call receive THEIR business questions answered personally, regardless of whether they ask them live, on the call, before or after it. And of course, an MP3 recording of the call is available for download less than an hour after the call. http://tinyurl.com/9uzxsa