Keep in mind as we build your business plan that marketing has two fundamental objectives:
Your existing clients are your base and represent your steady income. New clients represent growth and replace clients you may lose or fire along the way. Whatever steps we take in building a plan, we will want to ensure that we are acting to either retain desirable existing clients or acquire desirable new ones. Understand too that while the plan is important, the very act of planning has great value. Writing down your goals along with the tactics you will use to achieve them is an invaluable exercise in itself. When you put a plan into writing, you are ensuring that you are capable of articulating your ideas and you will be better equipped and more confident in your ability to carry out your objectives.
Finally, remember your plan should be flexible and organic. You will have to make adjustments throughout the year and from quarter to quarter. The ideal plan will be 5-10 pages of goals and notes about your strategies, a marketing calendar and some revenue and expense calculations. Plan on revisiting it often!
Action… Organization… Persistence
Every business requires three important ingredients to make them work: ACTION, ORGANIZATION and PERSISTENCE! Operating a business is a learning experience, a gradual process of building, compiling, and doing. If your actions are well planned and organized, you stand a far better chance of seeing your efforts succeed, especially if you are persistent. Sustained effort in action, organization and persistence will make all the difference in your business success!
The Essentials
Not everyone defines the components of a business plan in exactly the same way. Often you will also see the terms “strategy” and “objective” used in the context of a business plan, with some resulting confusion arising about the appropriate category of any given action. I’m a proponent of simplicity, however. For our purposes here, let’s agree to use these terms and definitions as we move forward.
Let’s begin with your Goals. What do you want to accomplish next year? How do you want next year to be different from the current one? Do you want to grow your client base by 15 clients? Do you want to increase your profitability by 20%? Do you want to improve your client relationships? To create a niche market for your practice? Travel more? Let’s think about the best way to accomplish your goals.
Setting Goals for Your Business Plan
It is one measure of how much potential the travel industry has that so many can earn a living without the need to follow so basic a rule. If you will take the time to write down your goals, it is almost a guarantee that you will achieve more. Writing your goals down gives them substance by orienting, clarifying and programming your mind in relationship to everything around you.
The most important aspect of a goal is the element of intentionality. You don’t want to meander through your travel practice, you want to drive it to your destination. Goals provide focus. Once you establish a goal, especially if you place it in writing, you are truly accountable to yourself. Goals help you hone in on the precise steps you must take to achieve them. Rather than haphazardly “meeting our numbers”, intentionality is a laser-like focus on an end result that both motivates us and helps to organize our methodology.
Then, there is the matter of balance. There is no reason that goal setting should be relegated only to your professional life. There is a need to achieve balance for the whole person. It is possible to set goals for your personal life, your family, your health and every aspect of your well-being.
Setting SMART Goals
Indeed, goal setting is a path to enhancing every aspect of your travel agency’s business plan. When applied to your sales efforts, goal setting assists you with focusing on the most important elements of the sales process, and programs the unconscious mind to maintain the right attitude toward your work. Sales professionals years ago developed the “S.M.A.R.T.” acronym as a mnemonic device to help remember how to properly go about properly setting goals:
Let’s review each of these in turn with reference to Suzy’s amazing feat (feet?) as a guide.
Specificity means that you know what you want to achieve and how you are going to do it. Your goals should be objectified – you have to put a real number to them. If you set the goal of “losing weight” the lack of specificity makes your goal less valid than if you say “I want to lose 10 pounds.” Likewise, setting a goal such as “increase the number of clients I work with this year” is a great goal. However, when you indicate that you are going to have working with 35 new cruise passengers this year, then your goal has much more substance. When you then begin to work through the tactics you will use to actually successfully work through the full buying cycle with 35 new passengers, then you have a much more specific, and therefore achievable, goal. Suzy Eddie Izzard knew exactly how many miles she faced when she took those first few steps out of Trafalgar Square, she knew how many days it was likely to take and she knew the path she would follow.
Measurable means that you can monitor your progress with a clear end result. Break your goal up into measurable increments and track your steps along the way. Make adjustments as you need to ensure that you are on the right path to hitting your targets. Suzy’s path had clear markers. She could measure her progress not only by the blisters on her feet, but by each day’s milestones.
Attainable – your goal has to be realistic. It should be a stretch, no goal should be set too low. But make your goal something that with a lot of hard work and perseverance, you can attain. Suzy Izzard’s goal was almost unbelievable – to everyone but her.
Reward – This is your motivation for the entire effort. Perhaps it is as simple as more income. If so, be specific. How much more income? Perhaps it is the satisfaction of knowing you can set a goal and keep it. Suzy Eddie Izzard’s reward? $300,000 raised for charity and the satisfaction of knowing she could do it.
Timeframe – When are you going to be the world’s greatest travel consultant? Someday? Be specific. Use a calendar to make your goals real. Suzy knew how long it should take her to complete her runs, and she did it. You can accomplish your goals the same way.
Nothing is impossible. Nothing. By the way, there is a series of video diaries documenting Izzard’s run around the British Isles. It will be a 1/2 hour well spent to watch them.
The question “What do you want” can sometimes be one of the most difficult to answer. It’s an odd psychological quirk we often find it far easier to say what we don’t want. Perhaps you have had one of these conversations:
“Where do you want to eat tonight?”
“I don’t know, it doesn’t matter to me.”
“How about Mexican?”
“No, anything but Mexican.”
“Greek?”
“No, we had Greek last week.”
“OK, where do you want to eat?”
“I don’t know, it really doesn’t matter to me.”
Hmmm. Ok, let me ask: What do you want for your travel practice?
If we don’t articulate what we want, we tend to not visualize our objectives very well. As a result, we end up settling for what we get and not knowing the difference. But forget about “we.” What you want is all about YOU. Whether you are an employee in a large travel firm or you own your business, goals and objectives tend to be a very personal issue.
You know it is best to make a very clear request when you want something. Requests veiled in too many layers of language are often not understood. Again, clear articulation assists understanding. It’s time to be clear with yourself.
When it comes to your business plans, start by asking what you want. You, and only you, are the expert here, but you need to be clear with yourself. Yes, we want our travel practice to be client-centric, but it also has to meet our own very personal needs.
What do you want the rest of this year to look like in terms of your finances and in terms of your time commitment? How much growth do you want to experience and how many clients do you want to have? How much free time do you want with your family? What specialties do you want to take on? What destinations do you want to visit? What do you want your business mix to be? How do you want next year to look differently from this year?
If you really want to understand your desires, write them down. When you write down your thoughts, you articulate them far better then when you “think” them to yourself. Writing down your wants is not busy work but an important step in better understanding your goals. You don’t understand well what you cannot articulate. Unexpressed thoughts tend to have a fuzzy, dream-like quality. The top players in any business have a clear picture of their path.
Once you have a list of wants, you will have a good start on your next business plan. Schedule an appointment with yourself this week and write down a short list of goals. It’s a good first step on your way to not only knowing what you want, but achieving those same goals.
In order to focus, choose no more than five key priorities as Goals. Make sure your goals are realistic, but don’t undershoot! You can always adjust them later. Write down your goals. Be specific and attach numbers to your goals where possible and use the SMART system for each.
Sample Goal:
To grow my client base by 15 new, FIT clients by December;