Did you ever imagine yourself lying on a beach enjoying the sun or spending
the holidays relaxing with relatives? We all daydream and picture ourselves
in places we'd like to go to, or doing things we enjoy or have always
wanted to try.
What do you do next if you want to make your daydream real? If you want
to take a vacation you make plans, buy your plane tickets and reserve
a hotel room. When the date arrives you head off to enjoy the rewards
of your daydreaming and planning.
Olympic athletes do a similar thing before a competition. They imagine
themselves skiing a course or moving through their sequence of gymnastic
moves. As they prepare, they see themselves doing each move to perfection
and then standing on the podium with a medal around their necks.
Visualization may apply to planning a great vacation and to winning athletic
competitions, but can it help you succeed in business?
You may remember the Harvard Business School study where recent graduates
were surveyed about their goals and then ten years later. The result
of visualizing their success? Graduates who had had clear goals in mind
were making two to ten times as much m0ney as their classmates. Put this
strategy to work; do some directed daydreaming.
Visualize Your Goals
Create a vivid image in your mind of what success means to you. Write
down the answers to the following questi0ns about your image of success:
What would you be doing with your time?
Who would your clients and customers be?
How many clients and customers would you have?
How much m0ney would you be making?
How much could you afford to give away to your favorite causes?
What would your lifestyle be?
Learn
how to translate your marketing goals into a marketing strategy you can
implement with the "5
Principles of Highly Effective Marketing". In it I walk
you through the strategies you need to get attention and get more clients.
Visualize
Your Objectives
To reach your lofty goals, you'll need to identify specific small business
marketing goals:
How many clients or customers do you want or will you need to be working
with each month?
How many new clients do you want to add per month?
In order to bring in new clients, you'll need to generate qualified prospects.
How many prospects do you want to target each month? How will you find
them?
Visualize Your Small Business Marketing Strategy
You need a plan. Most small businesses owners struggle with this part.
Begin by asking yourself:
What can I do to attract attention and prompt interest by prospects?
What can I do to increase the number of qualified leads generated each
month?
How can I build the credibility of my firm so prospects trust that we
deliver?
How can I ensure that prospects remember my firm when they have a need
and are ready to buy?
What is the sequence of decisions prospects need to make to become clients?
Visualize Your Small Business Marketing Tasks
Just having a marketing message, or an advertising campaign or a web
site doesn't ensure you of anything. Each of these needs to achieve the
specific goals and objectives you have set. The best way to evaluate
these efforts is from your prospects' perspective. Ask yourself:
What are my prospects' primary concerns?
Are my marketing messages interesting to prospects?
What would my response be to my own marketing calls?
Without mentioning the name of the company, its credentials or products,
is the value of what I provide clear to prospects?
What do I want prospects to do when they visit my web site?
If
you want to do more than just visualize your success, I have two manuals
you can use to create more opportunities and business.
Want to generate more leads and sales with your web site? If so, you'll find
my new "Creating
Web Sites that Sell" to be invaluable.
Just visualizing
success won't get you there, but it is an effective way to begin planning. Develop
your marketing goals, strategy, objectives, and tasks from this big
picture, and you'll create a plan that will lead you to become wildly
successful.
Email Charlie Cook Helping you attract more clients
and be more successful
