If you want to make more sales and find more clients, running non-stop to achieve this without a game plan is NOT the way to go. Sure, you’re bound to find some clients and even make sales, but if you’re doing it in a haphazard manner, you may be wasting your very valuable time.

To become successful, a marketing and sales program that encompasses your daily, weekly, and monthly activities is the only way to achieve measurable results. Here are some tips to creating a plan that works:

List the marketing tools that work best for you. Based upon your budget, list every marketing tool that helps you sell - for starters, you might consider networking, advertising, brochures, referrals, warm calling, web sites, and newsletters. There are hundreds of tools that might work for you - if you’ve never sat down to consider what’s available, now’s the time to consider the pros and cons of each and determine how they fit your budget.

List every single step required to create each tool. It’s easy to say “let’s make a brochure,” but getting the work done can be very time-consuming and wasteful. Unless money is no object, an action plan showing how you will create each of your marketing tools helps you identify areas where you can do the work yourself and the tasks for which you’ll need professional assistance.

Develop a step-by-step game plan for using each tool to get more business. There’s no sense developing your marketing tools if you aren’t going to use them in the most efficient manner possible. Start by writing down how you will use each tool to get more business and how often, where and when it should be used. Answer these questions for each and every tool you use.

In my Cut to the Chase Marketing™ seminars, I use business cards as an example of how to list what a simple marketing tool can do. For instance, business cards can be:

• given to everyone you meet

• left with referral partners, networking group members, and in strategic places where your services complement another service or product without causing competition

• included with all marketing information provided to prospects or clients

• added to all invoices, thank you notes, proposals, and bags/boxes of products shipped/sold.

Calculating how much business each tool should attract in order to meet your sales goals and objectives is the next step. Most people don’t think of business cards as a measurable activity, but it is. For instance, you might list the amount of business you want your business cards to generate as “one lead per week.”

Once your action plan is ready, set it in motion and track the results of each tool to see if you are on target with your goals. Make adjustments where necessary. Then, watch your sales start to climb as you follow your plan on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

NOTE: I can assist you with each step of the process just mentioned. Thanks to having worked with a variety of clients, I can help you figure out what tools will bring in the sales, then help you create and use them in the most efficient and budget-wise manner possible. Please call me at 425-415-6427 for more information or e-mail me at nancy@cuttothechasemarketing.com.