We don’t accept every potential client that comes our way.

Honestly, we don’t.

We not only must feel we can help them in a material way, we must be enthused at the prospect of doing so. This positive feeling is based upon our grasp of – and appreciation for – their mission and business model.

Then we take a leap of faith, which should be at the foundation of any good relationship, business or personal. At this point, we focus on doing everything we can to assist them in achieving their marketing objectives while, hopefully, making them glad they chose to partner with us.

As we trust any client-centric marketing consultants will appreciate and identify with, this feeling is something like falling in love . . . without having to remember birthday and anniversary dates.

How does your strategic plan look for 2013? If you haven’t drafted it yet, that perhaps is forgivable, what with the distractions of the mid-term election and that pesky recession with which you may have been preoccupied.

But the time to plan for next year is now . . . as in immediately. It can be as simple – for starters – as listing these items:
• Your objectives
• Strategy
• Tactics
• Timelines
• Budget
• Benchmarks (for measuring progress)

Mark your calendar for April 15 to “take the temperature” of your marketing efforts and progress to date. Then, make any adjustments that may be necessary at that time. Following this little plan will pay dividends in terms of real progress. To ignore such advanced planning is to invite, at best, mediocre progress and, at worst (need we say?).

It’s not so amazing to those of us in strategy development and marketing communication that, once again, the Presidential election turned, not so much on ideas, but how those ideas were positioned by the respective campaigns . . . and – not so coincidentally – how frequently those ideas were repeated to well-targeted consumers.

I have attempted to buy a product and a service recently (from two different vendors, both of whom I know and like). In each case, they did not respond to my e-mail request, even with a simple, “we’re too busy,” etc. (which I doubt) or, an “I’ll get back to you.” I neither owe these vendors money, nor have we had any difficulties in the past. What am I to think? Moral: Always take the time and effort to at least answer every request for your product or services, even if the answer is “no thanks.”