Viper Marketing & Communications Group

When Do You Start Thinking About Next Year?

Author: Neil Wilkins

Neil learnt his marketing with the likes of Orange, NatWest, BP Castrol and Ordnance Survey and now helps individuals and businesses to communicate more effectively. He trains and mentors marketers on professional Chartered Institute of Marketing qualifications through to post-graduate level.

Many people don't think about the future until it is the present. It's called not having a plan.

2010 feels as though it can hardly be over because we have only just come out of the summer. But we haven't. There are now just 38 working days left in this year which means our thoughts should really start to turn towards 2011... and I wonder what kind of year we'll have in store for us all?

Well actually with just 38 days to go if we haven't already then we are probably too late to truly hit the ground running. Without an integrated and strategic sales and marketing plan that projects many months or even years ahead it's always going to be a case of firefighting on a day to day basis and feeling as though we are playing catch up.

I mentioned the word strategic there. Depending on who you ask a 'strategic' plan should project outwards for up to 3 to 5 years ahead. Forget your 38 days left in 2010, this is proper planning. Knowing what your world is likely to look like 3 to 5 years out is a great starting point and means you are already working on next year right here, right now.

Admittedly those who do so aren't naive enough to think that they can predict exactly what the economy and customers will look like that far out but by at least having clearly defined goals and the shape of a route map to get to them you stand a good chance of hitting some of those desired objectives.

So if you haven't already, when you start to think about next year, do yourself a great big favour and think beyond and see if you can create a plan up to 3 to 5 years ahead. You never know what might happen then...

- Posted on Tuesday 02 Nov 2010 at 11:51 by Neil Wilkins

Tags: 2011 (2), planning (33), strategy (27)