OK… we’re almost to the end of our 10-part summer series. I hope you’ve taken the opportunity during this time to work on your business and not just in it.
Based on the feedback I’ve gotten, I know that many of you have grabbed on to some of these ideas and done something about them. But there may still be a few of you who have done your reading and not yet leapt into action. If that describes you, we offer up…
Summer tip #9: Do something… even just one thing… and make some progress
I’ll make this simple (not necessarily easy… but simple)… I want you to do just one thing this week related to marketing or sales… and you can decide what that is. If you’ve followed the series, here are a few ideas to get started…
- Pick one conference to attend this fall… specifically, register for the event, make sure you’ve got a supply of business cards and update your elevator pitch.
- Get a little more active on LinkedIn… specifically, reach out to 5 new people and ask them to connect… plus, join 1 new group (but pick one where a lot of your clients and prospects belong).
- Take a look at your online presence… specifically, take a critical look through your website and write down 5 things you need to do to improve the site (then go do them).
- Improve your business development skills… specifically, go to Google Alerts and set-up Alerts for 5 key words/phrases and your top 5 competitors.
- Clean up your sales/client database… specifically, look through the entire list to check for and correct any typos and, particularly, ill-formed email addresses.
- Develop a sales target list… specifically, identify 3 ‘big’ prospective clients (and the correct contact in each) that you will reach out to over the next week. Then create a plan for doing it.
- Develop content topic ideas… specifically, pick just one broad topic that you think would interest your clients and prospects. Then break it down into at least 4 sub-topics. If you’re writing weekly – you just covered a month!
- Differentiate your firm… specifically, with the help of a few of your colleagues, gather together and determine if you have any true PODs (points of differentiation). Not what you think is a POD (e.g. “We have great people!”) – but something that is truly unique. Got one? Now, how do you change your marketing & sales effort to focus on it?
Got something else in mind not listed above? Great! It doesn’t matter what it is… just go do it. Activity is the goal! Every day that you delay is a day of opportunity lost and a day of not having a competitive advantage.