March 19, 2024

Sales and Marketing Advice for Florida business

How to be productive and leave information overload behind

Ron Stein | 9/29/2013

I sometimes feel trapped by time and commitments. If it weren’t for the need to sleep and keep my family happy, I’d work 24 hours a day to make my business successful.

There was a time in the past when I felt like that. But, not now. Don’t get me wrong; I still work long and hard hours. Yet, here’s the thing, I feel more in control than ever, getting tons of things done for my business. And I’m enjoying every minute of it.

How about you?

I think the problem is information overload. It happens every day, multiple times a day. You know exactly what I’m talking about. To stay on top of your game and move your company forward you subscribe to thirty-seven e-newsletters, read the “right” blogs first thing every morning, sign-up for a webinar every couple of weeks, and constantly search Google for more of the information you need.

“If I can only learn out how to write the perfect sales letter, put together the perfect presentation, and create the perfect email newsletter.” Ah, perfection. It not only eats up a lot of time, it keeps us from taking action.

There’s no doubt that we all need to gain knowledge on things like this and keep up to date on what’s happening in your industry. Heck, if you learn something that makes you more efficient and moves your company forward then spend some time on it. But, the clock won’t stop ticking for your business.

Information without action is just about worthless. It stops you in your tracks from doing the things that your company’s revenue growth depends on. Think about it. For every hour your spend trying to find the answers to making your company better, you could be, well, making your company better by actually implementing your action plan.

It’ll take determination and guts to overcome this information overload disorder, yet I know you can do it. And yes, you’ll need to learn a few things along the way. You just need some pointers to help stay focused on the mission ahead.

Must know, should know, and nice to know. Standard operating procedure for most companies is to jump from their strategy into tactics. But, they don’t really know what’ll work best for what they want to accomplish. So, they go on what seems like a never-ending search for what will do the trick. That’s how people end up being overwhelmed by information resulting in a collection of tactics that don’t connect back to a strategy. The only way to stop munching through unnecessary information is to focus only on the things you must be doing now. Start with a solid marketing strategy and then measure everything you do by that. If the information you’re seeking doesn’t further your objective don’t spend time on it. But, how do you know what’s “must know” information?

Create marketing strategy initiatives. There’s a gap between big picture strategies and tactics. Develop two or three strategy initiatives, which are focused bite-sized mini plans to accomplish a particularly important objective under the umbrella of your big picture strategy objectives. Here’s an example; let’s say your company’s business strategy targets a narrow group of consumers with a product or service designed specifically to meet their needs. One of your strategy initiatives could be to share information that has an impact on your prospect’s life through a weekly e-newsletter that provides valuable, useable content -- without turning off your audience with hard-core sales pitches. This will be important in branding and helps build mind share. Now you have a guiding light. If what you’re doing and the information you’re searching for doesn’t further this strategy initiative, it’s not must know information or a must do activity.

Build a plan of action that makes implementation easy.

You now know what should be done; yet knowing how to do it is another matter. To get the maximum impact from your limited marketing budget and time, create a simple spreadsheet with the end goal in mind. Using the example above, launching a weekly e-newsletter by a specific date, work backwards. Start filling in all the activities that are a must to make this happen. Who is responsible? When must it happen? What information is needed? If you’ve never have created an e-newsletter before then your information search will start with who’s the best email service provider and learning how to create newsletter campaigns. Focus on what’s needed and don’t get sidetracked. Communicate with others on your team, staff and vendors, and let them know that the only information needed is something that helps everyone achieve the strategy initiative. The clock is ticking and action is the operative word.

Now is time to drown out the noise from useless information. It’s not just a question of how you can absorb all of that information and the time it takes to do that. The real issue is that valueless information keeps you from moving forward and taking action.

Transform strategic objectives into action with must have, must know information. Speaker and author Brian Tracy said, “It doesn’t matter where you are coming from. All that matters is where you are going.” Turn over a new leaf and leave your bad information overload habits behind. Take action today!


Ron Stein is President of FastPath Marketing (www.marketing-strategies-guide.com). He works with small business owners, helping them to energize their marketing and sell more of their products and services. Ron has developed his own highly successful 7-step approach to winning new customers as a result of his experience as a small business owner, corporate CEO, marketing and business development executive, salesman, and mentor at two nationally recognized business accelerators. Ron offers one-on-one and small group mentoring, conducts seminars, and consults. He can be reached at 727-398-1855 or Ron@FastPathMarketing.com.

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