I’m participating in a program at my gym. For 6 weeks, every day my goal is to walk 10,000 steps. Different activities translate into a number of steps per minute. My routine varies from day to day. Some days I am dancing. On others, I take yoga, Pilates, a combination of strength and sculpting, and of course, one of my new favorites, salsa.

What You Can Measure, You Can Manage

I work out consistently and frequently. What has changed with the addition of the pedometer is my focus on reaching my goal, 10,000 steps every day. As Buckminster Fuller said “What you can measure, you can manage.” I was surprised to see just how many of my current activities translate into this fitness goal. On several days I have exceeded by more than half the number of steps in my target. What I didn’t expect, I found myself looking for more opportunities to be in motion. All because I am wearing a pedometer.

In school, students are measured: attendance, turning in assignments, completing projects, social skills. In business, our performance is reviewed by our customers, our peers, and are managers. Stating the outcome we want and measuring our actions and results against the desired outcome, gives us the information we need to know to evaluate our actions compared to our intentions.

The very act of stating a goal, measuring progress, and being mindful of your goal, can help put you into action. In another area of my life, writing my book on marketing, I made a comment error. Even though I am working with a coach to help me build out my book, I neglected to write down my goals with dates and I didn’t make appointments to do the writing. I’m driven to take action when I have items in my calendar. This oversight putting back several weeks. When I met with my coach, I realized my error and I have now corrected it by putting time to work on my book in my schedule, a repeating event with alerts is now active on my calendar.

Planning your actions helps you reach your goal. Measuring your activities is a way to remind yourself, and reward yourself, for staying on track. Measuring and documenting your actions can also reveal what is getting in your way and give you a place to take corrective action.

A simple way to track your actions might be to make notes in your calendar. Of course, there’s an app for that too. Here are a few apps that can help you without taking up too much time and they are fun to use.

Evernote

It’s a free tool that I have installed on my computer, my iPhone, and my iPad. It lives in the cloud and syncs between all my smart devices. Tim Ferriss used it to write his most famous work, The 4-hour Work Week, and The 4-hour Body. It’s a great tool for writers, business owners, students, anyone who wants to keep track of information, websites, and organize the data. You can clip URLs, articles, and entire webpages with ease. You can create separate notebooks within Evernote. You can add tags, notes, voice annotations, photos, and you can even e-mail right from the program. There is a paid version of the program, most users will be satisfied with the free version. Check it out at http://www.evernote.com

Wunderlist

Wunderlist is a task management app that works on smart phones and computers (Mac and PC). You can ask it to remind you with alerts, e-mail reminders. You can create multiple lists, and like Evernote, sync your lists to your various devices via the cloud.

Google Docs

You can create a spreadsheet to track your actions and if you have others on your team, you can grant access to your Google Docs easily.

Dropbox

Is another cloud service where you can share documents on file by file basis. If you’re working with a coach, or other team members, putting your documents into dropbox allows sharing and editing with the people you grant access. To sign up for Dropbox, click here.

Tools You Can Use

I invite you to give these tools a try. They are free. Pick a project you want to complete and see how these tools help you succeed. You may be surprised to see how measuring what you do will help you do what you want to measure.

 

Do you think Prince Charming could find Cinderella if he didn’t know who he was looking for? He searched the land high and low for the woman who fit the glass slipper she had left behind. He knew only one woman was a match. Only one had a foot to fit the shoe he possessed.

When you begin the process of identifying your ideal customer, think like Prince Charming. Hopefully, more than one client is a match for your business. However, narrowing your search is a good place to start when defining your target market.

What are the exact characteristics and attributes of your ideal customers? Where would you be most likely to find them? What makes for a perfect fit with your services? Does your offer perfectly match the needs expressed by your customers? When you match up needs with what you provide, it will be like Cinderella and her perfect fit in the glass slipper.

If you remember the story, Prince Charming searched the land desperately seeking the woman whose foot was an exact match to the glass slipper. It was his only clue to her identity. He spent hours and hours, days upon days, weeks upon weeks, sifting through countless princesses, ugly stepsister’s, lots and lots of poor matches before he rediscovered his one true mate.

Fortunately for you, your marketing effort doesn’t need to be so difficult. You can start by writing down all of the attributes of your best customers or those who you want to be your best customers. You have tools at your disposal like Linkedin, business directories, networking groups, and of course, referrals from your existing customers.

Think about how persistent Prince Charming was in the pursuit of his goal. He overcame obstacles. He was tireless. He told everyone in his kingdom his plan. He used the tools he had, word-of-mouth, sending out messages of his intentions, declaring what he wanted, what he was looking for and his desired outcome. If you apply this kind of clarity of purpose to your marketing, I guarantee you will see positive results.

Prince Charming was a man with a plan. He knew who he was looking for, how to tell when he found her, and he knew who didn’t fit his plan. How many of you know your market as well as Prince Charming? Have you taken the time to profile your ideal customers? Are you persistent in casting your net in the right places at the right times?

I hope this somewhat fractured fairy tale not only makes you smile, but it makes you think and take action. Of course, having a little help from your Marketing Fairy Godmother is highly recommended.

Judy Baker, your Completely Creative Action Plan Marketing Coach and Marketing Fairy Godmother

 

Traction is an interesting concept

As defined by Webster’s Dictionary:

traction |ˈtrak sh ən|
noun
1 the action of drawing or pulling a thing over a surface, esp. a road or track : a primitive vehicle used in animal traction.

• motive power provided for such movement, esp. on a railroad : the changeover to diesel and electric traction.
• locomotives collectively.
2 Medicine the application of a sustained pull on a limb or muscle, esp. in order to maintain the position of a fractured bone or to correct a deformity : his leg is in traction.
3 the grip of a tire on a road or a wheel on a rail : his car hit a patch of ice and lost traction.

The word itself contains the word action. Action alone may not produce traction.The right actions will give you traction.

Picture yourself on a slippery highway rain is coming down in fact it may be cold enough that there is ice as well as rain on the road. If your tires don’t have enough tread hydroplane. When your tires are in good shape plenty of rubber and all of the gripping action that comes from plenty of tread you will have traction as you drive across the road. In the fall of 1986, I was driving the Oakville grade on my way to work. Those familiar with this road know it is particularly steep and narrow, and starts high over the Napa Valley.

It was September and we had a light rain the first of the season. This road was part of my daily commute from Sonoma to my job at the Robert Mondavi winery in Oakville. I was quite familiar with the road. The factor I was not familiar with was the oil and debris that had accumulated on the road that made the surface slick from the first rain. I just started my descent from the top of the grade into the Napa Valley. I was startled when I saw a large logging truck coming from the other direction. Reflexively I tapped my brakes and that’s when everything changed. My car lost traction and I started spinning. As soon as I realized what was happening I took my foot off the gas pedal my hands off the wheel and let the car travel on its own. In those few moments of sheer terror as they waited for the car to stop moving I realized just how important it is to be sure my car tires are up to the task of driving under any conditions.

Fortunately for me just the evening before I was watching a program on what to do if you ever are in a spin out in your car. The safety experts recommended the actions I took the very next day. They said if you are in a spin the best action to take is take your foot off the gas keep it off the brake and take your hands off the wheel. Many drivers try to over correct for this span and consequently they lock up the drive train of the car. My actions resulted in my car stopping safely on the other side of the road which happens to be at the edge of a very steep mountainside. I was able to walk away from the accident with a few bruises and scrapes but I was able to walk away. Had I tried to steer the car once it started spinning it is very likely I would have ended up a at the bottom of the mountain.

Your marketing activities may resemble an out-of-control spin. One moment everything is fine and the next finds you in danger. If you assume you have control over the situation when in fact tools enter vehicle are in poor repair and have put you into danger. Granted it’s not likely that you’ll find yourself in mortal danger as I did, but he could be risking the health and success of your business when you lack useful systems and the proper tools to give you traction in your marketing actions.

The five things that will give you traction in your marketing

One: a written plan

Two: schedule time for marketing

Three: measure your results

Four: follow-up consistently with the people you meet

Five: do something positive everyday

Sounds simple doesn’t it? Want to know a secret–it is. What happens to most of us is that we get busy doing and delivering services and we forget the importance of making a plan, a scheduling time to execute the plan, measuring our results, and while we may be busy networking how many of us consistently follow up with the people we met so our investment in networking returns dividends. The last piece, do something positive every day, is there to remind us what we think influences what we do.

Keep yourself from a marketing spin out by incorporating these five simple practices. You will be pleasantly surprised at your results when you start with a plan, purposefully take time to focus on marketing, you measure your results, and grow relationships by following up with people you meet, and every day you put your mind in a positive space and take positive action. Do this, and you are sure to gain traction from your purposeful actions.

 

What keeps us from making our dreams come true?

• Lack of a dream
• Lack of a concrete, step-by-step action plan to make it real
• Fuzzy thinking
• Poor organization

There are tools, techniques and coaches to help with each of these areas.

I’d like to share a free resource with you that can help you get and stay organized.

Avery Dennison, makers of all manner of labels and binders, has an extensive web site. It is full of tools, tips, articles, templates and software that can help you bring order to your life and business

http://www.avery.com/avery/en_us/

Avery templates work with a variety of software programs – the most popular being Microsoft Word. I use them with Adobe InDesign too.

Take a look.  You might be inspired to work on a project you have been avoiding with renewed energy and commitment.

Maybe you will start a new project that will move you closer to where you want to be.