The inspiration for this post came from a newsletter article I received from Suzanne Evans this morning, “There are NO Cinderella Stories”. She referred to “out of nowhere” success stories and what it REALLY takes for success to happen.

It got me thinking about how we entrepreneurs tend to market our businesses REactively versus PROactively. We develop a new product or service, start a bit of advertising and get “Facebooking” about it… and then when the sales don’t come rolling in, we pray for a miracle.

(Funny how so many of us only seem to resort to prayer when we want something…)

We’ve all done it at some point. We think we’ve done our homework. We know we have a great offer. And yet, no one is buying.

We find ourselves in those situations however, because we do not have an ACTION PLAN.

If you plan how, where and when you will market your products and services, to whom you will sell them, what your goals and objectives are, what results you want to gain (financial and other), and if you have a scheduled action agenda to make it all happen, then the miracles WILL come. No prayer required.

I see this so much with small businesses (and I confess, I’ve done it myself). They often call me in a sheer panic because their revenues are drying up. And of course, they needed everything to start selling out yesterday, so whatever hurry-up tactics we put in place have to be implemented NOW.

You can prevent the panic and the prayers completely with a plan. Your plan needs to include:

Situation Analysis: Starting from where you are, assess what your situation is. Be realistic, not dramatic. I doubt very much that you will be on the streets next week if you don’t make $48,000 by then. Write out what your challenges are, whether it’s a small budget or a tight schedule or staffing concerns.

Target Audience: Everyone thinks everyone else NEEDS their product or service. They don’t. You have to be very clear on the people with whom you want to work and how you can best communicate with them. If you can at all, go beyond demographics… describe the kind of food they eat for breakfast and what keeps them awake at night.

Set Goals: These need to be reasonable, trackable and measurable. As the saying goes, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. They can be statements like “grow my database by 30%”, “increase gross revenue by 15%”, or “sell 250 units per month by August”. (And in the case of selling units by August, don’t wait to start selling until July.)

Budget: You can do a lot with very little. Be reasonable and honest and know that whatever you choose to do in terms of the implementation will cost something – either time or money, or both. This is most often where people trip up though, and the prayers for miracles start pouring out to the heavens.

Strategies and Tactics: Notice this is Step 5. This makes me think of the lifeguard classes of my youth, warning me that if I dive in to save a drowning person, they’ll likely push me under in their panic and we’ll both go under. The best thing to do is to use a tool to reach out to them, let them take hold and help them out. (Even if it means poking them with a sharp stick to get them to stop flapping about and grab the damned thing.)

Jumping into a reactive marketing response by implementing tactics out of desperation, results in exhaustion, frustration and rising anxiety levels. It can actually be MORE costly than taking the time to plan it down to the minute details. Wasted time, energy and money can be redirected into more productive and profitable ventures.

Finally, once you have your plan, you have to EXECUTE it. You have to follow-through on all the things you said you were going to do. All the planning and preparation and prayers won’t accomplish much if you can’t make the plays when they count most. (That from a disappointed Broncos fan. And Texans fan. What a lousy weekend of football…)

It’s this reactionary behavior that gives marketing the reputation of ‘throwing crap at the wall until something sticks’. It’s the kind of approach to marketing that keeps entrepreneurs praying for miracles when they could be expecting miracles with a carefully planned and implemented Action Plan.

I have to congratulate some of my clients for heeding my call to action, planning their marketing activities and getting 2012 off to a great start.

How about you? Are YOU ready to stop praying and start expecting great things to happen? If so, I’m reaching out with some new tools to save you from drowning in a fit of panic. Check out my Marketing programs and services to get your Marketing Action Plans (MAPs) ready to roll out this year. It’s never too late to start.