Posted by Tara Robertson on Fri, Jul 16, 2010 @ 12:29 PM
It never seems more important to find ways to increase productivity than in the summer months. After all, the sun is shining (usually), the grass is green (most of the time), and your friends and family are calling. So who wants to sit behind a computer and work the days (and often nights) away?
I recently ran across an article that showed how one woman was able to increase work productivity through 11 simple steps. I thought I would share some of the top steps with you that have worked for me in the past and provide our own insight into how you can use these to better manage your productivity in the coming months:
- Respect your time: It is easy to plan your day with a certain "schedule" in mind. However we all know this schedule will most likely be pushed back for last minute projects, conference calls, and many, many, MANY other things. Try to respect your time. When someone asks you for something ask them "is it urgent." You'll find that most of the time, it can wait. This will help you respect your time and your schedule and get more done.
- Schedule time for email: Email can easily turn into a full time job if you are not managing when/how to respond to emails appropriately. To avoid the need to constantly respond to incoming emails, try turning it off for a few hours a day and only responding to emails during designated hours.
- No calls/meetings without a purpose: We all do it. The need to schedule a meeting and leave that meeting with no end result. If you can't craft up an agenda and leave with action items, your meeting can probably wait.
- Forcing people (and yourself) to find the point: It's a fact, we all ramble from time to time. This makes meetings (see above) last longer than necessary and tends to leave many people confused at the end. When making a point, make it, and move on. Try to help your colleagues do this as well!
- Leave that mobile device away while working: In this day and age it is easy to be working off of 2 if not 5 different pieces of technology. One that can be put aside is your cell. Your email is being checked and most likely that text message can wait.
- Cut off personal conversation during working hours: It is easy to get pulled into endless conversations that have nothing to do with what you are working on. While it is important to be able to talk with your colleagues and take time for a break during the day, one conversation can easily turn into 10. Try to avoid personal conversations when your schedule is slammed.
- Only do what's important: Even though that one project seems way more fun, it's not always what's important. Try to prioritize your projects by "need to do, "have to do" and "want to do." This will help you prioritize your schedule and get the most important things done on a daily basis. It's usually ok if your "want to do" projects take a few weeks.
- Having an actual life: While we are all working towards this with all of the steps above, I can't emphasize how important it is to make sure you make time for you. Stress can be one of the biggest causes for loosing productivity and if you make time for you, your level of stress is likely to be much lower than if you work around the clock.
So there you have it. These tips worked for people all over the globe, so why not you! You can read the original article with alternate feedback on how to use these tips by clicking here.
Posted by Tara Donnelly on Mon, Feb 16, 2009 @ 03:03 PM
Marketing Operations is a relatively new term that has been tossed around over the last couple years. According to wikipedia, Marketing Operations (or Marketing Operations Management/MOM) is a vision of end to end marketing optimization, from planning and budgeting, through marketing content management, to global marketing execution and analysis. While this is all correct, we would term marketing operations as simply your foundation in which you work to improve your marketing effectiveness.
When starting your marketing operations plan, here are some basic steps to get you started in marketing more effectively.
- Track Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI) - Any and all marketing tactics should be tracked in order to determine its effectiveness. You can track your ROMI by use of a marketing dashboard with marketing automation programs; however if you do not have access to these programs, a simple spreadsheet will suffice. Tracking ROMI should (in the least) contain the following: cost of tactic, time for implementation (cost of internal team), leads generated, conversion rates for leads, proposal stage, and closed/won revenue. By keeping track of these numbers, you will quickly learn which tactics generate the most leads, and more importantly, which tactics generate the most sales.
- Develop Dashboards - Most CRM tools have dashboards that can be created in order to track your ongoing marketing and sales activities. In these dashboards you can track lead conversions (by sales reps), marketing leads generated, sales goals, and top marketing tactics as some examples. If you do not have access to dashboards within your CRM tool, these can also be created via spreadsheets (though this can often be time consuming). For more information or ideas on how to custom create company dashboards, email us.
- Marketing Lead Conversion - One of the best ways to measure campaign effectiveness is through lead conversion rates. This should be tested by assigning leads to (at minimum) 3 different sales reps from the same marketing tactic. After a few weeks/months, tracking what leads convert, which sales reps are converting them, and how long the conversion rate takes, you will have not only an idea of how successful your marketing campaign was; but also which sales reps have the highest conversion rates, and what the average lead lifecycle time should be for that particular tactic.
- Lead Lifecycle Management - Tracking the lifecycle of your leads is a crucial part to marketing operations. When leads are not tracked, it is easy for them to slip through the cracks and potential sales could be lost. Some successful ways in tracking leads are to create a lead lifetime with your sales team that is attainable. Based on your marketing conversion rates, you will soon be able to determine what the average lead conversion rate should be. For example, if you are able to determine that a lead should convert within 90 days, than your lead lifetime should be 90 days. If after 9 days a lead does not convert, the lead then goes back into lead nurtuting for marketing or gets assigned to a different sales rep. Sales should also have an average per contact touch ratio to determine how many times a prospect gets reached out to within the 90 day time period.
- Campaign Management - When starting your marketing operations plan, you should always make sure you manage your campaigns from start to finish. This encompasses setting up a marketing schedule and managing tactic launch dates, close dates, and multi-touch marketing efforts. This will help assure that your marketing efforts will stay within your monthly/quarterly budget and also drive consistent leads for your sales team.
Good luck and let us know if you have any additional questions on how to start your marketing operations plan.