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Today, P is very much for planning. I’m a huge planner. It gives me thinking time; I know what I’m doing, I’ve got some structure, a place to head to, and I’ve got some process involved in everything I do.
Sometimes, I don’t plan as well as I could.
The consequence is that I don’t achieve the results that I wanted. Today I will give you a few questions to ask yourself as you sit down and plan.
And I will share some practical tools that you can use that will shock you. They are so simple, but they work.
Before I do that, if you’re new here, welcome; there will be a transcription of this podcast over on www.superfastrecruitment.co.uk/blog. You will see it there, along with a range of other content that you can use to take your marketing forward.
If you’re thinking, “What am I going to do with my marketing? I know I need to do more things, where can I start? Have you got a process I can follow?” then I suggest you head to superfastrecruitment.co.uk/clf.
We have a brand new complimentary video series; you just need to pop your name and email address in, and we’ll send it to you.
In that video series, we share two of our most popular frameworks that we’ve developed for our clients that you can then use. There are four videos, one of which is a bonus video, which I know will blow your mind.
Go along, pop your name and email address in. What we talk about in these videos is basically how to set up a system for consistent lead flow. I think we all know that when we have consistent leads coming into our business, we stand a sporting chance of converting at least some of them, be that candidate or client.
In these videos, we show you how to structure everything, some of the things you need to consider, and why this needs to be a foundation of your plan.
Start With Your Plan
Now let’s talk about planning and these questions to ask yourself, first of all. Planning can be a bit of a nemesis for many people. They don’t want to spend the time, and it involves thinking a bit deeper than usual.
I think many recruitment business owners are ‘just do it’ people. They want to jump in, start moving forward fast and don’t always want to do the foundational work, whereas if you take some time to plan and start to map things out, what a massive difference that makes for you.
Look at the likes of Apple, Facebook and various other huge organisations. One of the reasons they are so successful is because they focus on planning what they want to do, when they want to do it, looking at what’s working or not working, and then making the necessary adjustments and steps to make it a different experience.
A classic planning tool that many people use is the stop, start, continue process. What do we need to stop doing? What do we need to start doing? What do we need to consider when it comes to moving forward?
The Questions You Need to Answer
I have five different questions I ask.
What’s working?
The first one is what’s working? Sometimes this might be something on the surface that is quite boring. That is fine; carry on -boring stuff works. The challenge for many is dropping what works for the bright, shiny object syndrome; don’t do that.
The first thing to do is think: “Okay, if this is working, maybe we should do more of it.”
Let’s say videoing; let’s say I feel a little bit uncomfortable about videoing. Oh, it’s not my favourite thing to do. I might stop doing it, but the fact is, is it working? If it’s working, I recommend you do more of it.
What’s not working?
Let’s cover something here that is important. Sometimes, the inputs take time to develop the outputs you want when it comes to marketing.
You have to give things time to know whether they’re working or not. For many marketing activities, this could be 90 days plus. Though there may be some things in your business, you continue to do that you can’t track any ROI from. Maybe a networking group you have been part of for years or sponsoring a local event that no longer connects with your market. What is your version of this?
What can we do differently?
You may see something your competitor is doing, and you think, “Do you know what? We could do that, and we could do it better.” Then that might be something you want to think about; what can we do differently?
I always encourage people, particularly when it comes to marketing, to try out new things. If it works, fantastic. If it doesn’t work, then you’ve got information.
It is all about pushing out to the edge of our limits. We don’t know until we try something how well it could work.
I’ve just been looking at something online about Wordle, this new game that people are playing, and how this guy decided he wanted to do this little quiz for him and his partner. He was just trying something different, and it’s gone bonkers. So, think about what you could do differently this year that might help you stand out.
What do we want to do this year?
A question to ask yourself is, what do I want to do this year? Is it more revenue in less time? Maybe you want to generate consistent processes that will lead to more revenue in
Q 2 or 3?
So, what are our goals? Some people say, “I want to double my business,” or, “I want to do X, Y, Z,” or, “I’ve got a three-year plan, and by the end of these three years, I want to have turned over a million from a cash flow point of view.”
If you’re going to do that, you need a plan to deliver that. Normally, it will involve taking a lot more action than you realise. To get to that stage, there will be a lot of input. You need to think about that as you plan things out.
What do we need to address?
For some of you listening to this, you might have teams, and it may be that you need to address something in your team or need to improve resourcing or headcount.
I suspect that many of you are short of candidates. That would be one thing you need to address: how I’m interacting with candidates, how we’re nurturing them, what are our processes, how do we stand out to candidates above everybody else. It may be that you have all these.
Now, once you’ve looked at all of this information, then you can start planning. There is a lot of content on our website around 90-day planning. I start to map things through the month because it’s very easy to assume that you can do something very fast-which isn’t always the case.
I like to do this on paper, and some of you might want to do it online, entirely up to you. I just like to do it on paper. I use one of these big A3 pads, and I divide it up with a good old-fashioned ruler into 12 months.
Let’s just say that you want to have a new website by the end of this year or implement a new CRM system, which is all part and involved in the marketing process.
Then that will involve time which will take you away from some other things you couldn’t do, so map it out.
As an example, we run two Superfast Circle events in April and September. Our clients are our priority. Starting in February, I need to plan and prepare to make sure that everything is ready, working, and going to be fantastic.
I know that I need to have a campaign that I’ve used before to run in April because I won’t have much time to design something new.
You might have a trade show or decide to recruit some new consultants, so they will need more leads. You might want to have a new report created or a new email campaign that’s ready to go four weeks after your new guys arrive. Maybe you want to do some paid advertising.
We work with a number of partners as well in the recruitment sector. We’re doing something with Louise Triance in a few weeks’ time. I know there’s some content I need to create for that.
We work with another partner program, and we are presenting at their event as we are creating some content for them. I know that all that needs to be mapped in now.
As you do that, you start to see where you have gaps, and you start to see, “Well, actually, we’re not doing anything around April and May.
What are we going to do? What could we put in place here? How can we do X? How can we do Y?”
Our Circle members know in advance the content that we are delivering for them so they can plan that into their marketing campaigns. It helps them manage their time because we’re creating it for them.
If having access to campaigns and planning help like this would be valuable to you and you want to find out more, book a conversation with one of us here.
Planning Helps You See the Gaps
Once you start to plan in this way, you can see where your gaps are and what else you could implement.
Top tip, always front-load activity, because no matter who you are, where you are, when you work in the B2B sectors, conversion takes a long time.
When you are thinking about developing relationships with organisations that will probably give you multiple roles as you move into the future, it can take weeks and months.
You will know how long it takes to go from cold to sold. If you have that data, then you can plan accordingly.
Lots of different ideas here for how you can map out that plan, but I like to always do the helicopter view.
Planning will make a massive difference to you. Go on to Amazon, get these A3 pads, and map out what you’re planning to do. Then you can start to put some real timelines and actions on your plan.
Stephen Covey always talks about starting with the end in mind in his 7 habits book. If you know some of the things you want to address this year, put that on your plan because until it’s out and on paper, you don’t know the implications of what you need to do and how you can make it happen.
It’s great because the brain sees, “Oh, they’re really serious about this. Let’s move on then. Let’s just provide some things for them.” The reticular activating system kicks in. I always get very excited about planning because it makes a difference.
If you need help with your marketing, you know where we are. Remember, we provide content, we provide collateral, we provide resources. It is the equivalent of having two outsourced marketing directors working with you on your business.
We’d love for you to join us in the Superfast Circle, and I hope this has given you some reasons why it’s good to invest right now as you start the year.
If you’d like some more support around your marketing, go to our private Facebook group Recruitment Marketing Mastery Facebook group, request to join, and Sharon or I will let you in.
How We Can Help
We have many clients on track for their best year ever because they implement what we teach and utilise the content and campaigns we give them.
Book your call and demonstration here if you want a quick chat to see how Superfast Circle can work for you.
Thanks
Denise
P.S. If you want to join Superfast Circle and would like to find out more, speak to us here.
