Lots happening this week...

• For the firm, it's end of the month and end of the quarter-just like our customers, we're scrambling
• Sales are strong, but we're always looking for more
• Added John Routhier as a senior partner...wicked strong background in sales and marketing
• Personally feeling superb and just started jogging...well, kind of jogging 
• ...and this week, I just completed my annual MGH checkups from my PCP, cardiologist and other specialists.  Back to back days, multiple tests...over and done with.  All good!

It's such a privilege to live in cities like Boston, New York, Dallas, and many others where one has such an incredible concentration of excellent, world-class healthcare.   After a couple of "situations" during the last couple of years, it's very reassuring to know from my buddies at MGH that everything on the health front is A-OK! 

We all live in very time-consuming  and high-pressure environments working very hard to balance our careers and personal lives, so having the quiet knowledge that everything is A-OK medically is more than a little comforting.


As a result of all of this personal process of questioning, probing, listening and testing, I thought that I would do the same with the business, which led to us sitting down this week to analytically take a snapshot of the business

• How we measure up in YoY sales and profits is the easy part since we look at these metrics constantly
• Even for us, who live every day in the reality of sales and marketing processes, tactics and advanced tools and their resulting analytics, we still need to do formal quarterly checkups on lead creation, frequency and use of referrals, and proposal win-loss rates along with five other key indicators.     
• The much more complex checkup is on strategy...   
  • "Are we following the primary directions we said we would at the beginning of the year?"
  • "Are we focusing only on the target markets that we agreed we would?"
  • "Are we making the investments that we said we would?"
  • ...and a host of other prospect targeting questions all focused on new business

Working in the world of strategy and business planning with a wide variety of hundreds of customers ranging from emerging tech companies to industrial product public corporations to municipalities, colleges and many service businesses, the key lessons we've learned over 25 years are...

1. The process of strategy and business planning is worthless unless there is consistency and repetition.
2. The plan (business plan, sales plan, marketing plan) is not as important as the planning process.
3. Quarterly checkups are very important, and six month checkups are critical to the company's health.
   
   

Think about a "Whiteboarding Session"

You may want to think about working through a half day "Whiteboarding Session" with us once the quarter ends. 

Similar to an annual physical, in a highly interactive four or five hours, we'll take everything apart and put it back together again probing, questioning, listening and pushing just a bit in order to provide you with an immediate assessment of what we see along with a number of immediate recommendations.

Depending on your focus, we can look at the company as a whole strategically or financially, or take a much more specific view into the inner workings of your sales and marketing departments.

Give me or George Simmons or the new guy, John Routhier, a call, and we can walk you through the process

Today, as a result of my checkups, I know that I'm A-OK healthwise. 

You should want to know the same thing about your business! 

......

As this Quarter draws to a close...

IT's time to TUNE UP YOUR OWN BUSINESS & MARKETING PLANS

Also, since you're now right at the end of Q2, you just may want to put aside a day during the first half of July to refine and update your 2016 Business Plan, or at least your 2016 Sales and Marketing Plans.  To get you started, click here and receive a downloaded copy of our Writing the Winning Business Plan, 2016 edition.

Another opportunity for preparing now for Q4 is to do the same type of "relook" at the basics of your 2016 Marketing Plan after reviewing our ebook on "How to Write a Marketing Plan". This consists of mostly solid basics and tactical structure stuff...which just might be the perfect thing to do right now before you dive too deeply into Q3. 

...and, of course, if you just want to talk through some of where you are right now and use us as a confidential sounding board...or do a short Whiteboarding Session with any of us, just email me, and we will work out a convenient schedule.

Good Selling!  These final days are the days that count the most!

Have a great weekend!