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I’m a big fan of planning. In fact, it has been said, “Success is in the planning”, and I tend to agree. If time is taken to determine specific actions, the project or outcome will have a better chance to succeed. In general, not many will argue with this line of thinking, the challenge is action . . . believing it is important enough to actually do. For planning to be complete one should consider both personal and business planning, as they flow into each other. This article will focus on the business aspect (but don’t YOU forget the personal side like family, faith, & friends) of planning, covering historical success, maximizing future activities, and utilizing a contact manager like ACT! to build consistency.

Before one can effectively plan, they must also consider what has brought them to the present. Answering questions like, what did I do in the last year? What worked well? What worked not so well? With which people did I experience the most success?

If you are using a contact manager like ACT! properly, you should be able to ask these questions of your database. For example, if you are using sales opportunities, you can report on the number of sales you closed as a result of meeting someone at Tradeshow A vs. Tradeshow B. You can use other functions to tabulate what lead sources produced contacts that took your desired action, as well as why you are losing business to which competitors.

Other questions pertain to items in the coming year. Events: What events will I be attending? What would be an acceptable outcome to justify attending? What can I be doing now to prepare for that event? Relationships: Who can I partner with to maximize mutual success in the coming year? Continuing Education: This is the greatest asset in any business, if you are committed to continuing education, you are committed to the success of your business. What skill sets do I wish to sharpen in the coming year? Who are the people I would like to learn from? What events do they have, and when?

While I cannot share all possible questions of looking back and forward, I can give you an idea where to start. One way you can use ACT! by Sage is to help gauge your progress. By using the calendar, you can schedule activities necessary in leading up to a tradeshow. If you get one thing from this article, it is this, Schedule Monthly Reviews of projects or documented goals as a recurring activity. Each month you review your marketing and/or sales projects, their progress, if they are on schedule, and what needs to be done by next months review. Other ideas, are you tracking with your prospecting plans? Are your newsletter list building initiatives on track? By following this, you can limit the chances of task overload days before the deadline, and you are building a lifestyle of consistency. Setting a reasonable pace will allow for more progress than the shooting star approach to productivity, but this will require discipline.

There is an addon product that I’d like to introduce you to here. It enhances the functionality of the ACT! Calendar in many ways. One thing it allows you to do is colorize activities. So, for example all your planning activities show up a unique color, so when you print the calendar your eye can easily locate these activities. You can also leverage the word wrap feature of calendar printing, so you have all the details on the print out. There are quite a few features, you can check it out here: http://www.actasap.net/cp

Whatever tools you use, be it pen and paper or a comprehensive contact manager like ACT! it is important to understand your own history (what got you where you are) as well as what needs to be done to maximize future activities. Once you have this information use a tracking system/tool to schedule consistency of activity so that your goals might be realized.

If the saying is true, “Success is in the planning” what success are you planning for in the coming year?

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