—
Col. Wesley L. Fox, USMC (Ret.)
Market planning is the hands-on road map for growing your business. It's the "what, when, where, and to whom" of selling — the way to coordinate your career goals and business plan with your sales activities to be sure you're effective,
efficient, and profitable.
Marketing cannot be hit or miss; it has to be part of your business model.
Formal market planning systematically addresses getting profitable new business while maintaining and increasing the profitability of your current business. (Busy producers often overlook opportunities that are right in front of them.)
In other words, if selling is reaping the harvest, marketing is sowing the
seeds.
Some producers try getting by with an unfocused, transactional approach; savvy professionals zero in on well-defined, validated market segments with good
numbers and other favorables, not the least of which are clear-cut needs for
their products and services.
By intensifying their resources and expertise in these areas, and adopting
market-appropriate strategies, systems and tactics, they achieve dominance in
their targeted groups. In short, they have a marketing vision and follow that vision until it's a reality.
But, that's not all.
Developing a marketing plan also inspires financial services professionals to focus on the big picture need for planning and productivity throughout their practices, especially their roles in engineering their own success.
Successful advisers research, strategize, plan, and act (mostly on revenue-generating activities). Then, they manage their resources so they can spend as much time and energy as possible on the bottom-line — doing what they do best!
Ohio National is not affiliated with, nor does it endorse or sponsor, any particular prospecting, marketing or selling system.