1.
COMMUNICATE

Sounds
obvious right? Ask yourself who you are communicating to…

Is
it senior management only?

Is
it all of your staff?

Is
it some of your staff?

Is it your customer? It needs to be a two-way street with all of them, if your communication is one-sided and infrequent you run the risk of isolating your vision to the board room. Sharing your mission with your staff and customers can help to build your brand and share where you strive for the company to be on a daily basis. Promises to your customers are imperative for trust and relationship building for future contracts and engagement.

In order to communicate effectively you really do need to understand your audience, which we all know but don’t always achieve. This will enhance your chances of success when trying to gain trust and build a relationship with the customer – only then will you get the sale.

2.
BE CONSISTENT

We’ve
all known someone who is there one minute and gone the next and it can be
frustrating. Those friends who randomly pop up when they need something or who
aren’t very predictable or reliable when it comes to meeting up.

Consistency
helps us feel safe, it allows us to feel understood and included. These
feelings are very important for human interaction and fulfilling our basic
needs.

Whether
it’s your marketing, your sales calls, your customer service or your workshop
deliveries; make them a priority and make them consistent in order to create
stable growth and to promote internal and external communication patterns.

3.
BE ACCOUNTABLE

So,
you’ve just done a lap around the Top Gear test track and you want to know if
you’ve beaten Jay Kay and Tom Hiddleston but you can’t look at the board. How
will you know how you’ve done?

You
won’t. If you don’t set up measures to track your activity you’ll never know if
it was a success or not and therefore, you’ll never know if the money you spent
was worth it or not. So, was there any point bothering?

Think
of a child in school running the egg and spoon race, they can’t see the
competition because they’ve got their head down looking at their egg…but then
nobody tells them if they won or not at the end – carnage!

When
you plan some activity, ensure you have set an objective (what you want the
outcome to be, in what timeframe) and a review method, it sounds simple but
you’d be amazed at how many businesses don’t do it.

4.
HAVE PATIENCE

Life-changing
results don’t generally just magic themselves up overnight so we have to be
patient. It can be frustrating when you are so desperate for something to
happen and we have to wait. Life is about waiting though isn’t it. Waiting for
Friday, waiting for Summer, waiting in the Post Office – we do it daily!
Patience is a virtue as they say and in business, we can be quite the opposite
sometimes because of our in-built drive and determination.

If
you set the right objective and plan accordingly, know your audience, get
everyone involved and manage your timing, the results will come.

5.
BALANCE DIGITAL & TRADITIONAL

The world doesn’t revolve around digital marketing although it is becoming increasingly more important and increasingly more effective. There is however, still a place for traditional marketing and advertising for sure. This year, 90% of adults in the UK are recent users of the internet but only 44% of adults over 75 years of age have been online so in particular, if your target demographic is an older age group, you need to consider other ways of getting your message out thereThe way to decide what marketing you really need to do, to whom, when, why and how is to step back and start from the top of your business again. Better still, speak to me and I will do it all for you….http://www.gemmaangharad.com/vision