2012 Marketing Planning – 4 Business Realities to Consider when Planning

I call 2012 the Year of Business Realities.  We have weathered the bad economy for some years now, faced our own business mortality and somehow survived.  An honest evaluation of the near future must include the resignation that things aren’t going to get significantly better anytime soon.  So as we plan for 2012 it’s important to accept, and possibly embrace, the business realities that exist and make a plan that strategically leverages what at face value seems like inadequacies.  Are they really inadequacies, or just the new realities?  Why not look at your business with the same self-critical eye we use when we look into the post-holidays mirror and decide to take back control of our waistline? Might these realities optimistically be viewed as the catalyst for that new Pilates regimen you’ve been considering to make your core stronger?  Or the Boot Camp you’ve been eyeing to get rid of those love handles once and for all?  This could be the opportunity your business midriff has been waiting for!

In this four-part series I will share real business challenges we encounter in the organizations we work with and suggest on how you might look at your business, staff and marketing endeavors differently with the goal of creating a more realistic and effective 2012.

REALITY 1 – Doing More with Less

It’s true. Budgets are smaller. We have to do more with less.  But American productivity is at an all-time high.  Why is that?  New technologies offer us efficiencies that are unprecedented and that’s good.  But look at your own business and see if you’re really leveraging new technologies to their fullest.  Are your people trained on these technologies and are you holding them, and yourself, accountable?  Are you accounting for the change in your operations that the new technology might create?  Take a good look at your organizational structure and ask yourself if it needs an overhaul.  If your structure is as it was 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago, odds are it could use a reorg.

TIP:  Get all Moneyball on your business and see if there’s a better way to structure your workload and workforce. As an exercise, shatter your org chart.  List your key personnel in one column and key positions/skill sets in another (not current positions, but positions and/or skills sets key to 2012 success).  Then draw lines, matching talents and temperaments to positions skill sets.  Do they all have a match?  Make the tough decisions before you move into 2012.