Marketing Can Be Fun...But Numbers Are Everything

As much as I love writing about marketing, I am very aware that effective marketing is impossible without sound business planning.

Good Business Planning

Some of the factors that contribute to good business planning are:

• knowing your numbers;
• knowing who your clients are;
• know who can assist you and what they can do for you;
• being aware of what you are doing;
• having a schedule to dedicate 60% of your time towards building new business by prospecting for new clients;
• being clear of your budget and time;
• knowing your peak performance time; and finally - fully planning your year with adequate time off.

Numbers Are Everything

We have to know where we stand. How would we know where we are going unless we know where we are?

The numbers provide the objective data about everything we need to know about our business activities:

• how many calls you have to make in order to connect with a good lead
• how many leads you need in order to generate one client
• how much money you make from each client
• how much money you earn for each call you make...and for each hour you work
• how many Internet hits you need to get one client
• etc.

We have to know things like this...but unfortunately we often find...or make...ourselves too busy to track these numbers, let alone pay much attention to them.

Certainly many sales people have the motivation to undertake varied and demanding actions.

But far too often tracking and making sense of the numbers is not one of these actions.

Sure it's great to feel good about what we are doing...but what do your numbers tell you?