We often need to look at familiar things in new ways in order to create a paradigm shift in our thinking. In the photo above, the two people fishing are in water up to their knees. The photo was taken from a sailboat that draws six feet (two meters). The shift is knowing that there is a channel dredged out of the shallows that made it safe for our sailboat to pass.
Businesses come in all shapes and sizes. Their marketing plans are similarly diverse and the sophistication of plan often has no relation to the size of the company or the markets they serve. There are certain marketing fundamentals that apply no matter what your business or your target markets and prospects. While we need to paint a vision for our prospects, maybe they do want to sail into the sunset, we also need to focus on those fundamentals that will let us communicate our vision.
I wrote in my last blog post Vision, Goals, and Actions about how critical it is to take a time out, create a vision for your company, and then plan the five year, one year, and next quarter plans, complete with measurable key productivity indicators. This post is about those key productivity indicators.
Jesse Lyn Stoner’s blog posting 6 Tips to Set Goals That Will Get You Where You Want to Go got me thinking about how I help companies create a vision, set goals, and measure actions. I’ve learned that the best practice involves looking at your business the opposite way that most people do. Rather than look at the next quarter or the next year, you start with your core values that will survive forever, look forward fifteen or twenty years, and then work backwards from there.
Racing a sailboat is both art and science. It starts with the helmsperson’s sense of feel for the boat, wind, and waves. Getting the boat into rhythm. Minimizing the turn of the rudder to keep the boat moving. We call it getting into the groove.