ORDERING FROM THE ACTION PLAN MENU

There are two ways of going about selecting what Daily Actions to include in your program. One way is to choose from the selections already prepared for you that appear on the Action Plan Menu (Figure 5-1). The other is to design your own unique actions. Let’s look first at how to design your own, which will help you understand how to make the best choices.

Suppose you are focusing on the closing sales stage, and you have chosen direct contact and follow-up as one of your marketing strategies. How could you use this strategy to close more sales? Perhaps you could follow up better by re-contacting people who you have already presented to, but didn’t buy from you at the time.

To turn this into a specific, consistent action, give it a time frame and quantify it—for example, “Follow up with five prospects each week who previously said no.” This action directly addresses the stage where you need more work, using a marketing strategy you have chosen.

How do you know how often to do something and how much of it to do? You guess. How much activity do you think will be necessary to achieve the result you want? How much do you have time for? The right answer is probably somewhere between those two. But really, there is no one right answer. It doesn’t matter so much what you choose as it does that you choose.

Remember the Get Clients Now! goal-setting philosophy:

1. Set goals that will stretch you, but that you believe are realistic.

2. Try your best to meet them.

3. When it becomes clear that a goal is unrealistic, change it.

4. Reward yourself for effort, not just results. Punishment is not allowed.

You’re going to use these same principles again in designing your Daily Actions. Pick a time frame and quantity that seem reasonable. Try it out. If it’s not working, change it. And reward yourself for what you did, not what you got.

You can choose to perform an action daily, weekly, or several times per week. “Daily” typically means five days per week, which is the recommended schedule for the Get Clients Now! program. The only rule is that all actions must be performed at least weekly, because you need to develop consistency in your marketing in order for the Persistence Effect to work. While it’s okay to change the frequency of your actions once you start the program, it’s generally not a good idea to change the actions themselves until you are ready to move forward to the next stage of the Universal Marketing Cycle.

Now that you know how the process of designing a Daily Action works, take a look at the Action Plan Menu in Figure 5-1. The menu is divided into three sections:

Appetizers—actions that will help you to create or acquire Success Ingredients

Main course—actions focused directly on getting business

Dessert—actions to help you be more effective and productive in general

You are going to choose ten Daily Actions, either from the menu or of your own design. As with a meal, you will need to balance your selections. The best combination for a satisfying marketing banquet is one or two actions from the Appetizer menu, seven or eight entrees from the Main Course section, and one Dessert item. This design will create an effective balance between project work (e.g., building a website), actual business development (e.g., making cold calls), and self-management (e.g., getting enough sleep) in your action plan.