On Friday, May 25, 2018, a new law governing the collection and protection of personal data went into effect in the European Union. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) created a uniform set of laws regulating the protection of personal data by companies doing business in the EU. It replaced the 1995 EU Data Protection Directive with enhanced requirements on those companies that collect personal data and stiffer penalties for those companies that fail to comply.

Every organization has a sales funnel. From startup to IPO, you have a way of selling to potential and current customers. Are you hitting all your goals? Is your budget generating the right number of leads? The process for converting a lead into a customer is a mystery to most organizations. As we mentioned before, we took years in developing our strategy to accurately reflect how people think. We love the brain and people and decision-making. Modeling our process from the research done by scholars James O. Prochaska and Carlo Di Clemente, we designed not only a process for how prospects buy but an analysis to evaluate your current marketing tactics, guide you in creating the right content, resource your sales team and create a unique process that best suits your needs.

Answering the question, “what stage are your prospects in?” will radically change how you sell and market.

What’s the last item you purchased? Go to your Amazon orders and look. For me, it was a pair of gym socks. Who says you need to start back in the gym at the beginning of the new year? Better now than never. Maybe you ordered a business book, kitchen supplies or whatever you didn’t want to leave your house for. Regardless of the product, we all made conscience decisions along the way. Now, what about for your business? Think about the last service you paid for. Did you just invest in Zendesk, upgrade your Slack account or hire an agency to redesign your website? Same thing. You went through a process before making that purchase.

Challenge:

FitzMartin has been working with Occupational Health Dynamics (OHD) since 2015.  A leader in the occ health industry, OHD provides law, fire, industrial and occ health industries with fit testing devices.  OHD had a large database of contacts that no one was actively following up on, generated from trade shows, referrals and marketing over the years. As we got OHD up and running in HubSpot, we didn’t want to upload the entire database without knowing if these contacts were still valid, or in simpler terms, marketing to a dead list. So our challenge was to find a way to validate and confirm the list.

Every year my father sends me a list. This years list, "Fake News," "covfefe" top this year's banned words list was published by MICHIGAN RADIO. Reviewing these lists and reflecting or laughing at our having fallen into the traps of using the shamed words is a New Year tradition for us. I thought I might share it with you too. "Let me ask you this" are you guilty? I am, but also I am committed to improving. For me, shedding some words might be as important as shedding a few pounds!

Getting away from the office and taking a step back to think about your business can have huge benefits. Just look at one of our clients who we facilitated a planning retreat with: they had no digital presence or sales process model. After a planning session we launched a new focused plan to a specific market and cross-sold the primary product line through a solid content plan. They obtain 60-70 new leads a month now! 

After 25 years and over 5,000 clients of experience, we wanted to help create more of these success stories. How? We've developed a new Marketing and Sale Planning Retreat service that works in three different ways, so that your business's unique needs are met. 

It’s time to jump into planning for 2018, but it can be difficult to know where to start with creating a roadmap for the coming year. Is it worth setting the time aside to carefully create a marketing and sales plan? Yes, if you do it right. 

You wouldn’t run a marathon without training. You wouldn’t take a test without studying. You shouldn’t go into the new year without a strategic, comprehensive plan. It’s about time to start thinking about 2018. The best way to ensure your business’s success in 2018 is to make sure that you have a plan. A plan that’s actually well thought out, deliberate, and takes into consideration your past performance. Success in business, just like success in any aspect of life, is contingent on good planning.

With 25 years and over 5,000 clients worth of experience, not only do we enjoy planning retreats, but we're also good at helping teams build out their strategy. We conduct planning retreats in multiple fashions to fit the unique needs of your business. One of which is a live, video session with a retreat leader.

Planning retreats are valuable practices, if done correctly. One aspect of a retreat that is central to the idea is going off-site for a period of time. Getting out of the office has many pros that can help your team refresh and refocus for a successful year. Check out some of the benefits that getting out of the office can provide: