Winning teams do two things:
- Plan
- Practice
I am always amazed that marketing and sales teams do neither. Events pop off with no coordination, presentations are given without any practice, and the net result is at worst chaos and at best confused messages to customers, prospects, and stakeholders.
For planning, a centralized marketing calendar can go a long ways to starting the planning process. I use these steps to create a year-long marketing calendar:
- Write down all major external facing events for the year. Does your organization have an AGM? Put that on the calendar. Any trade shows? Add them. Critical customer events are added next.
- For the next quarter, write down all communication events broken down by communication channel (direct mail, newsletters, email, blogs, phone calls, customer visits …) and customer segments. Make sure that you are giving regular pulse points to each of your segments.
- For each of the external facing events in #1 and #2, start creating the detailed deadlines for the internal events needed to support each external event. Giving a presentation at a trade show? Write down the deadline when the final copy has to be sent in. Set a deadline for final internal review of the presentation. Create another deadline for the practice session for the presentation.
- Some external events have a very predictable set of activities that precede the event. For example, an online webinar might look like:
- Two weeks before the webinar, send an email to all interested parties.
- One week before the webinar, send another email to all interested parties.
- Three days before the webinar, finalize the presentation material.
- Two days before the webinar, rehearse the presentation material internally.
- One day before the webinar, send an email reminder to all registered attendees.
- The day of the webinar, send another email reminder to attendees.
- Do the webinar.
- Day after the webinar, follow up with each attendee with a phone call.
Once you start laying out the activities, you will find that your marketing calendar can get very busy. This is okay — it makes sure that you have the right resources in place for those busy times.
You will notice that I put rehearsal time into the schedule. Presentation, article, and other critical marketing and communication pieces need to be both created and reviewed. Presentations need to be rehearsed. This is part of the practice of creating outstanding customer experiences which ultimately lead to you winning.
The photograph above is of my son Kevin playing for Team Canada at the 2010 World Ultimate Frisbee Championships. A combination of plans, plays, practice, and skilled players led Canada to win all their regulation games at the Championship.
Have you made your plans?
