Are you ready for 2021? Yup, so are we! But use what time you have left this year to plan for marketing success ahead – here’s what you need to get started.

Strategy:  Map out your top priorities for the new year. If the company needs to heavily focus on 1st quarter sales, how are you going to help them achieve that? Was there an initiative this year that helped you gain further insight into what’s working in Sales and Marketing? If so, it’s time to dive into the report structure, logic and process to help drive budget discussions for next year.  Whatever your company’s goals were for 2020 (and we know they’ve shifted multiple times this year) assess the wins and use those to serve as a foundation for your priorities next year.

Planning: Once you identify your top priorities for the new year, map out how you’re going to work to achieve them; consider sprints of monthly or quarterly implementation planning to ensure you’re reviewing your progress as you go. Yes, pull out your calendar and start adding milestones. List the challenges that may prevent you from achieving each milestone. Also, list the action items you need to do (or others need to do) in order to achieve those milestones.  Once you have done the proper planning, it’s time to move onto Execution.

Execution:  Now you need to pull the people and resources together you’ll need to accomplish the action items identified in Planning.

Accountability:  This is an important piece!  Find a way to hold yourself and the others required for the project(s) accountable!  A good way to do this is a weekly meeting with follow-up report. Schedule a weekly meeting solely to check in on status of achieving milestones.  A report should come out of that meeting with the current status as well as any roadblocks/risks that may prevent on time delivery. Send that report to your higher up stakeholder.  Knowing that a higher up will see this will keep people on their toes to ensure it is a good report and no shocking news.

See how the execution is actually the easier part of the above process?  It will be worth it when you stop to review, you are able to report to your management how you have contributed to the company/department achieving their goals for 2021.

You’re not alone – we’re here to help. In any or all of the phases above, Definitive Results helps ensure clients are successful in the work they set out to accomplish!