Game Plans
(GP)
This is
the actual working, organic model and “ideas put to a plan” document that
guides your daily and weekly business.
It can literally take the place of “business plan” if you run it well
and often. As tasks and ideas are added,
prioritize and see what workable task or action item is coming up next. As new items are added, reprioritize based on
upcoming marks and goals, in order to meet those marks and for purposes of
resource allocation .
The GP is the cornerstone of all the other tools and
is designed to replace the older and more formidable “Business Plan.” The writing of a business plan might be
completed after a long and arduous period.
When you finally finish it and use it to secure some financing, you
should feel very proud of yourself for completing it. However, you may then
find yourself saying something to the effect of, “What do I do with it now?” or
“How do I now use it to run the daily operations of my business?” GPs rid you
of this feeling and are actually designed to be understandable and simple to
use. They are ORGANIC by design and are
constantly shrinking, growing and evolving.
The longest one I have ever started with was about five pages in length. We actually knocked off a bunch of action
items in the first 90 days, and it lived at around three pages going forward.
A GP is actionable tasks and items, to be handled by a
certain person, by a certain time. We
need accountability, agreement (most powerful thing in the world), and a “by
when” something is to be completed.
These are the essential components of a GP.
2 CRM – Customer Relationship Management System
It is a
fact we can each only handle so much in any given day. We need help to organize and handle the tasks
we need to complete and clients we need to keep track of. A CRM is a “must” for this.
In one of my early businesses, we quickly learned the
value of a CRM. We wanted to keep
growing our database of new client prospects, while also needing to distinguish
current clients and referrals from potential clients. We quickly ran out of manual systems to
accomplish this, and I went in search of software to help us out.
Nowadays the choices of CRM software are astronomical,
and we can certainly recommend a variety of options for you to consider if you
would like. The variables usually have
to do with your industry, size of business and database, and the ancillary
components of your business that you want to tie to your CRM (i.e., e-commerce,
e-marketing, outbound news from your organization, sales automation, etc.)
Whether you are product driven, service driven or
both, a CRM is an important tool for reaching and communicating with today’s
business world.
3 Goals
Worksheet
You cannot
get anywhere without knowing where you are going. Have annual goals for each of your business
Segments (Bret Snyder’s Segments of
Responsibility), and then check on their progress each quarter. Schedule a quarterly meeting to review the
goals and how actions are tracking in relation to meeting them by year’s
end. If adjustments are needed,
implement them and renegotiate all aspects to make the attainment realistic.
The “win the day” system is important here and will
get even clearer with our next tool.
Remember to post the goals for each Segment where they
can be seen by any and all working in that Segment. Everyone must “buy in” from the beginning and
should read the goals each day – a good reason to keep them succinct and
precise.
4 Weekly Stats
& Trends Sheet
Weekly
stats and trend sheets will help tell you if you are “winning the day” and if
you are on track towards your goals. It
will also tell you where you are in relation to your goals; whereby you assess
your progress, make adjustments, and raise it to the next level.
We can stat and trend nearly everything we do. The idea here is to set bite-sized daily
goals for each person in each Segment; then subsequently stat the completion or
incompletion of those goals. A sales executive
may have a daily goal of five outcalls.
If she marks each time she makes one, she should notice the trend and be
able to adjust to meet the marks. These
small daily goals are broken down from overarching goals of the entire
organization.
For example, the Sales Segment may say its goal is
$200,000 in gross sales this year with two sales executives in place. Each one then needs to sell $100,000 over the
year, or an average of $25,000 per quarter.
Now, based upon reaching those numbers, each sales person should then
calculate how many outcalls - emails - face-to-face meetings - etc. must be
produced per day/week/month in order to make the $25,000 quarterly mark. Then simple math can be used to extrapolate
the number of action cycles needed on average (daily/weekly/monthly) to make
that sale. Multiply the numbers to get
to the quarterly number, and divide to get back to the daily action cycle
numbers – viola!
Remember too, these stats will tell you and your staff
if YOU are likewise winning the day.
Once you have set and agree upon the goals for each Segment and person,
you can then mark a “won the day” on her tracking sheet. Then, encourage her to win those three days
each week, three weeks each month, and so on…
5 Lead
Tracking Sheet
These keep
you accountable to yourself, your partners, and your goals. Leads are valuable, so keeping track of what
is being done with them and where they are at in any point of the sales cycle
is vital.
A good policy is to have one fill out each month or quarter
– you will be amazed at what you discover.
Remember, “Marketing” is spending money to bring in leads. A tracking
system can tell you quite a bit about where you are spending your marketing
dollars, and where you may want to spend it in the future. This activity too will help you ascertain how
much each lead costs and what your organization is doing with the leads.
Your sheet should show:
·
Lead source
·
Where in the
cycle the lead is located
·
Lead name and
contact information
·
Qualification
level
·
Urgency
With many of today’s CRM systems (#2 above), lead
tracking can be done within a very sophisticated and easy-to-use system. In this case, you must define the data you
wish to have collected pertinent to the lead, so that the system provides you
with the specific information you want and need. I have seen many companies invest in nice CRM
and lead tracking systems, only to have personnel not enter the appropriate
complete and pertinent data, so the system does not send results in a usable
manner. Ugh!
6 Time
Blocking
Regardless of your personal love for spontaneity, we
as humans also need to make plans and templates in order to get things
done. If we do not plan and block our
time – to an even greater degree when at work – we will not get the things we
need done in order to stay healthy and happy.
I use simple calendar sheets for each week to block
time for my specific areas of responsibility.
I also block time inside of my workday – calls, email returns, writing,
video tapping, meetings, etc. I get all
this done by the end of Monday morning, so the rest of my week is set while I
am at the office. Yes, some days my plan
is destroyed. Those are the days I
usually do not “win the day.” I try my
best though to stay within my time blocks, and these are typically the days
when I am most productive.
These are six easy tools to remember and
use. If you need templates for any of
these, you can find them in our series, Juggling
Sanity – eBook, audio, or online
training formats.
Could you use help with “winning the
day”? How about just with setting
realistic and attainable goals? How
about with personnel and your staff and partners weighing in and buying in to
the daily tasks?
Until next time, remember:
Go BIG
Make a difference in the lives of those you touch
No one should be working smarter or harder than you in your chosen
field
