The Silver Lining

Following on from my comments about thinking laterally last week, I've had one of those weeks where it doesn't matter how good you think your planning is - it just doesn't work out. That's really annoying but we've discovered that those are the best moments because there's often another opportunity that you were meant to go for instead. There's always a reason and that's the law according to Karen and Fay. Well otherwise it would be depressing.

So from a business point of view how do you deal with a complete change of direction? If you've put together your business or marketing plan for the year you're hopefully using it - this is the moment to re-visit it and think backwards. Sometimes we get so single minded about following a particular track we forget what we were aiming for and that there's usually more than one way to get there. Fay and I do this regularly with food if possible (I'd like to add "and a glass of wine" at this point but unfortunately it tends to be coffee) or over Skype (not usually with food). We remind each other what it is we're trying to achieve and once we've got past holidays/new car/MORE SHOPPING (sorry Fay but it is really important), we invariably come up with a new idea for promoting our products. It's easy to add this back into our plan with a quick tweak and it's good to look again in any case as we always think of something else.

Anyway, this week we had to change our plan and now we feel better, hence the silver lining.

Karen McNulty
MarketingPlanWiz