Archive for October, 2008

Creating Raving Fans

“A Raving Fan, Means That Your Business Owns That Customer”…

..that customer will not buy from any of your competitors. This book like other Ken Blanchard classics is written in a story form Mr. Blanchard also uses several real businesses examples that have actually created real raving fans. If these companies have created raving fans then it must be possible right? In 22 years working the restaurant industry sometimes it seemed it was all I could do to manage the ranting fans let alone feeling that any effort applied to the corporate management program of the month would be successful. I was confident that it surely would be forgotten within the next couple of months. Then we could just get back to business as usual. I’ll admit ranting is sometimes much more fun then raving, however how much nicer would your work environment be if we all heard a few more raves throughout the day from our employees and customers?

Employees well honestly this truly was the reason that drew me to building e-commerce businesses. The fact that you are in total control, you decide how you operate your business, who you do business with and what you get in return from your customers.

The main point that Mr. Blanchard makes in the creation of Raving Fans

“…That customer satisfaction is not enough, actual service is so bad in our society that people expect mediocrity.”

For instance in my former industry guests have come to expect a non-attentive hostess, a sign that says please wait to be seated, food that is served warm and bathrooms that are dirty. Sounds like your favorite restaurant? What would you change if you owned your favorite restaurant? What kind of experience do you want to create for your customers that visit your web site? Yes you are in control

When you own your own business you control your thoughts and behaviors, you do not need to work with employees that may have negative attitudes, attitudes such as these I am to busy, that is not my job, that is not my section. Mr. Blanchard expands upon this concept when he wrote this customers only comeback because their expectations are so low, not because they are satisfied with your product or service.” We assume they are satisfied because they do not complain. Most people hate confrontation, they will just not come back. These theories have been preached for years from all of the gurus, yet the level of service continues on its steady decline. No, I do not have studies of customer satisfaction I have my own over observant self to notice these trends.

Creating a raving fan is a multi-step process…

Creating raving fans requires 3 steps.

1. First you have to identify what you want to create and

2. then model your vision for your business

3. Then implement your vision in 1% increments

Yes that means you need to set goals for your business, then and only then can you create the business of your dreams. The second secret is to create a vision of perfection centered on the customer. Sounds like a no-brainer however finding out what each and every customer needs and wants is not so easy, once identified then begin to deliver that raving fan service. Third is the rule of 1%. That means you improve 1% at a time until you create raving fan service. Then go 1% beyond that service.

All successful businesses offline and online have three things in common

1. .systems,

2. accountabilities,

3. 3.training/continuous education.

The systems are the guidelines for the basic required service standard that is acceptable to create raving fan service. The accountabilities are how you inspect what you expect, the training is just that, relevant focused, targeted. It is necessary to apply the other two requirements.

Ken Blanchard also identifies two very important barriers to creating Raving Fans. These barriers I have witnesses not only in a corporate environment but also surprisingly in small mom and pop business. They are relevant to your ecommerce business, if you have employees, and act as a great reminder for managing the growth of your business.

The first barrier is described in this quote from Ken Blanchard

“most customer service hopes have been wrecked on the rigid shoes of immobile bureaucratic minds with in the corporate structure.”

This means the new CFO, COO, Vice President, or who ever the company just hired has to justify his high rate of pay. Thus 86ing most start up efforts based upon short term maximum bottom line improvement. Yes the customer gets shorted for the sake of the investor/owner. This sounds logical and is normal management philosophy right. I myself have been there done that. I applied the same justification and strategy to fixing broken restaurants. Yes this philosophy does create a conflict between doing what is necessary to create raving fans and the short term return on investment for the share holder. Again making the case for beginning and running your own ecommerce business eliminates the levels of managers that would kill you ideas. By eliminating these barriers you will have more opportunity to find and create more raving fans. However if you decide to contiue on with the crazy life of restaurant owner then remember this advice. Successful restaurants implemt the three step restaurant training program.

Train From the Start

Train Often

Train Always

Creating your brand is creating your identity for your business. Who are you are in the marketplace?

Restaurant Branding

First and foremost you need to know what you are promising to your customers. To do this you need to Create your brand and message. We do this through a series of steps.

1. SWOT Analysis
2. USP
3. USP Analysis

These are the first three steps we are going to address in creating a brand.

SWOT Analysis

What it is:A simple system for identifying a company’s strategic growth opportunities in the marketplace: also suggests strategies to increase competitive advantage.
Where it comes from: The 1969 book Business Policy, Text and Cases by Edmund P. Learned and others (Irwin).
Summary:
An organization conducting a SWOT analysis will list its:

1. Internal factors, such as proprietary brands, company culture, distribution systems, exclusive access to natural resources, image, market share, patents, and personnel. The analysts will then decide which of these factors are strengths and which are weaknesses.

2. External factors, such as competitors, economic trends, partners, regulatory concerns and suppliers. The analysts will then decide which of these factors are Opportunities and which are Threats.

Analysts then create separate lists for each of the SWOT categories (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) and compare them to uncover strategic insights. Example: Could a sagging brand image (a weakness) be reduced by a strong marketing department (a strength)? Your opportunities are then backed by your keyword research! Your keyword research helps identify the high demand, low competition phrases that position our business idea not only into the niche but also helps us to identify and move our brand into its future position.
What else you need to know:

SWOT’s usefulness depends on management creativity and vision. Example: A new technology might look like a threat in the hands of a competitor, but become an opportunity when you get the rights to use it.

USP (Unique Selling Proposition)

What it does:
Defines what makes an organization’s products successful in the marketplace; also pinpoints the most effective way to market products to consumers.

Where it comes from:

The term USP was coined by the legendary advertising copywriter Rosser Reeves, who explained it in his 1961 book Reality in Advertising (Knopf, now out of print). Reeves was known as a no-nonsense advertising copywriter who rejected the notion, popular in the 1950s, that people bought products because of deeper Freudian needs. Reeves wrote, “If the product does not meet some existing desire or need of the consumer, the advertising will ultimately fail.”
Summary:
The USP is the unique trait or feature of a product that differentiates it from competing products. It is the one predominant thing about a product that causes a consumer to choose that product over others.
USP’s are broken down into 3 parts
• Features
• Benefits
• Solutions

A great example of this is the Energy Star web site under Home Improvement

http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=home_improvement.hm_improvement_index

The page is broken down into 3 sections
• What Energy star is solving
• The Benefits of the energy Star Program
• The Solutions that Energy Star offers

USP in Advertising

These are really Slogans or Taglines these are the result of going through the branding process
Domino Pizza’s “Fresh, hot pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less, guaranteed.” No claims are made about the pizza being delicious. Speed of delivery is the USP.
Fedex’s “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.” There is no talk about nice-looking trucks or careful handling of packages. Overnight delivery is the USP.
Because the concept of USP has become widely used and misunderstood in marketing circles, it is worth returning to the definition that Rosser Reeves first gave for it in Reality in Advertising:
- Each advertisement must say to each reader “Buy this product and you will get this specific benefit.”
- The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not, offer. It must be unique.
- The proposition must be so strong that it can “move the mass millions,” as Reeves put it. In other words, it must be unique enough to attract new customers to the product.
What else you need to know
It can be a worthwhile exercise to weigh your products and services against the USP concept. Does your product have some critical feature that differentiates it from all its competitors? If not, can you develop one and use it to drive your marketing and advertising? In short, do your products have one compelling feature that causes consumers to make an immediate buying decision?

Create your Brand (Identity) Then Tell the World!! (or at least your 3-5 mile radius)

The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and

Feeling a bit Lost?

sells itself
Peter F. Drucker
The objective is to identify and break down the process of writing ad copy for your web presence and or other advertising campaigns. We are going to break the process down into 3 steps

Step 1 Create your USP (Unique Selling Proposition)
Step 2 Optimize your Content
Step 3 Convert to Ad Copy

When creating content for your web pages, or other advertising media you are not only writing content but you are also refining your brand and communicating it to your customer. The Content on your web site is actually written as Ad Copy (this is the type of writing specific to the advertising industry). The basic principle behind writing ad copy is to attract your customer’s attention and then persuade them to take action.

The foundation to writing ad copy is to first know your customer (Market Research) and second know your service (USP) Ad copy follows a structure that incorporates a headline to attract attention, text content that clarifies the facts and claims of the headline. Then a lead up to a natural call to action, in other words what do you precisely want your reader to do? Buy something sign up for an e-mail, etc. We are bombarded of with headlines and data on a daily basis from all types of media. Ultimately we have a lot of competition.

Step 1; Write your USP (Unique Selling Proposition)
The Unique Selling Proposition (also Unique Selling Point) is a marketing concept that was first proposed as a theory to explain a pattern among successful advertising campaigns of the early 1940s. It states that such campaigns made unique propositions to the customer and that this convinced them to switch brands. The term was invented by Rosser Reeves of Ted Bates & Company. Today the term is used in other fields or just casually to refer to any aspect of an object that differentiates it from similar objects.
Today, a number of businesses and corporations currently use USPs as a basis for their marketing campaigns.
In Reality in Advertising (Reeves 1961, pp. 46–48) Reeves laments that the U.S.P. is widely misunderstood and gives a precise definition in three parts:
1. Each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer. Not just words, not just product puffery, not just show-window advertising. Each advertisement must say to each reader: “Buy this product, and you will get this specific benefit.”
2. The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not, offer. It must be unique—either a uniqueness of the brand or a claim not otherwise made in that particular field of advertising.
3. The proposition must be so strong that it can move the mass millions, i.e., pull over new customers to your product.
“If the product does not meet some existing desire or need of the consumer, the advertising will ultimately fail”

Rosser Reeves

Your USP is broken down into 3 parts
• Feature (what are you solving for the customer, Identify their pain)
• Benefits of your product or service
• Solutions you offer for their problem or desire.

Step 2; Use your business USP for the home page and then optimize the content with the most relevant Keywords for the individual page.
•
Each page needs to have some text based content (between 200- 400 words) describing what you offer on that page.
• Make sure you utilize the keywords for that page.
• Use your BEST keywords (Title tags) in the opening, first few sentences including the headline using H1, H2, H3 this not only helps with the search engines but also grabs the attention of the customer searching for those words.
• The search engines look from top to bottom, left to right, therefore if you can bring them in at the top left (introduction) of each page, you will get better placement with the search engines.
• Make EACH keyword anchored text if the to the page that deals with that product, even if you’re linking to the same page you’re on.
• Incorporate the best keywords at a saturation rate of 3-7% for each keyword on that page (I usually shoot for 5% keyword density for each keyword phrase).

You can check keyword density at http://www.rankquest.com/tools/Keyword-Density-Analyzer.php . Then repeat the process using your business USP as a guide for all of your subpages.

Step 3; Convert the content to Ad copy using the AIDA model of writing ad copy.

The acronym AIDA is a handy tool for ensuring that your copy, or other writing, grabs attention. The acronym stands for:
• Attention (or Attract)
• Interest
• Desire
• Action.
These are the four steps you need to take your audience through if you want them to buy your product or visit your website and we need to do it in approximately 30 seconds.
1. Attention/Attract
In our media-filled world, you need to be quick and direct to grab people’s attention. Use powerful words, headlines or a picture that will catch the reader’s eye and make them stop and read what you have to say next. Remember you are fighting the backspace button as your biggest enemy.
2. Interest
Building interest is one of the most challenging stages: You’ve got the attention of a chunk of your target audience, but can you engage with them enough so that they’ll want to spend their precious time understanding your message in more detail? This means helping them to pick out the messages that are relevant to them quickly. So use bullets and subheadings, and break up the text to make your points stand out.
3. Desire
Interest and desire parts of AIDA go hand-in-hand: As you’re building the reader’s interest, you also need to help them understand how what you’re offering can help them in a real way. The main way of doing this is by appealing to their personal needs and wants. How? By communicating your business benefits and solutions that you offer

4. Action
Finally, be very clear about what action you want your readers to take; for example, the stock standard, “buy now”, “download now” “sign up now” etc. rather than just leaving people to work out what to do for themselves. We need to get them to where they want to go with in a few pages or our message is for not.

Review;
1. The 3 steps to writing ad copy begin with identifying who are in the marketplace. If you do not know your unique position, or who you are in the marketplace how can you communicate it?
2. The next step is then to take your USP and then optimize it. This process will then enable you to adjust your content specifically for each category page.
3. Then convert to Ad Copy, this means to ad optimized headlines and calls to action for each page.
4. Incorporate plenty of white space bullet pointed content and easy to skim and scan benefits for the reader to see quickly, painlessly, effortlessly.
Recommended Books
Content Rich “Writing Your Way to Wealth on The Internet” By Jon Wuebber
Words that Sell By Richard Bayan

“Management by objectives works if you know the objectives…90% of the time you don’t

Leadership

Peter Drucker
Unleashing the power of purpose
Vision Statements and Mission Statements are the inspiring words chosen by successful leaders to clearly and convey the direction of the business or organization. By crafting a clear mission statement and then vision statement. The objective is then to powerfully communicate your intentions and motivate your team or organization to realize an attractive and inspiring common vision of the future.
“Mission Statements” and “Vision Statements” do two distinctly different jobs.
Mission Statement defines the organization’s purpose and primary objectives. Its prime function is internal – to define the key measure or measures of the organization’s success. This is mostly a management tool to help define internal systems and Structures. The mission statement helps to define the short term tactics used to achieve the long term Vision.
Vision Statements also define the organizations purpose, but this time they do so in terms of the organization’s values rather than bottom line measures (values are guiding beliefs about how things should be done.) The vision statement communicates both the purpose and values of the organization.
For employees, it gives direction about how they are expected to behave and inspires them to give their best. Shared with customers, it shapes customers’ understanding of why they should work with the organization.
The Vision is truly beginning with the end in mind
The Vision is a distinct picture of what your long term business looks like. The advantage with the vision is the power of influence, the ability to pill people into your vision. Communicating your vision in a way that attracts people to your cause like a magnet, basically through your sense of purpose, belief, passion and enthusiasm you are easily able to convince people to buy into your business, the excitement pulls them to you. It is necessary to creating Raving Fans and instead of selling you are now creating a solution for your customers the products sell themselves.

The Contrast of a company that lacks vision is the following, management and employees lack purpose, and enthusiasm and often times let the urgent supersede the important, work with low intention, and focus on tactical execution with absolutely no focus on the future goals.
This is not necessarily the issue (to focus on tactical execution is not wrong however to focus on busyness verses business becomes a losing proposition.) You are in the drivers seat to Cultivate a Purpose, paint a clear vision, make clear the reason for your organizations existence and the unique product or service you offer.
First we look at creating mission statements. Then we create vision statements.
Mission Statement Creation

1. To create your mission statement, first identify your organization’s “winning idea”.

(This is the idea or approach that will make your organization stand out from its competitors, and is the reason that customers will come to you and not your competitors Review your USP)

2. Next identify the key measures of your success. Make sure you choose the most important measures (and not too many of them!)

3. Combine your winning idea and success measures into a tangible and measurable goal. (Creates systems and Accountabilities)

4. Refine the words until you have a concise and precise statement of your mission, which expresses your ideas, measures and desired result.
Example:

Take the example of a produce store whose winning idea is “farm freshness”. The owner identifies two keys measures of her success: freshness and customer satisfaction. She creates her mission statement – which is the action goal that combines the winning idea and measures of success.
The mission statement of Farm Fresh Produce is:
“To become the number one produce store in Main Street by selling the highest quality, freshest farm produce, from farm to customer in under 24 hours on 75% of our range and with 98% customer satisfaction.”
Verses a Large Corporate Mission Sysco
Syscos’s Mission – Helping Our Customers Succeed
It’s the foundation of the decisions and actions taken by our employees on a daily basis.
Attention to detail, going the extra mile and simply being available for any need enhances the level of service each customer receives, and ultimately benefits customers in their daily endeavors to satisfy patrons.
We are committed to our customer’s success and to helping them achieve their goals. Maintaining outstanding service has become even more important as consumers embrace quality dining experiences as they enjoy meals away from home. Our responsibility is not taken lightly our customer’s success is vital to our success.

“The Best way to predict the future is to create it”
Peter Drucker

Vision Statement Creation

Once you’ve created your mission statement, the next step would then be to create your vision statement: A vision statement should paint a picture of what you want your business or division to look like in the future. This may of may not be something that you are necessarily going to share with your customers this is about what you want for your future.
Your vision statement should excite you and help you dream. If your vision statement doesn’t excite you how can you expect to be successful, how can go to work each day and be motivated? How can you overcome the obstacles and frustration brought on by starting a business?
A vision statement should be specific to a company, team or division and therefore there could be numerous vision statements in one company. This will help us to understand that we can have multiple visions for each aspect of our business.

1. First identify your organization’s mission. Then uncover the real, human value in that mission this again translates from your USP and what are you solving for your market.
2. Next, identify what you and your customers will value most about accomplishing your mission. What is the true goal of Sysco’s mission? (Our responsibility is not taken lightly our customer’s success is vital to our success).
3. Combine your mission with your long term strategy until you create a vision statement inspiring enough to excite you to wake up everyday this will translate to your customers.
4. Using the example mission statement developed for Farm Fresh Produce, the owner examines what she, her customers and her employees value about her mission.

The examples below are to contrast the differences in business size and style the vision statement for Farm Fresh Produce and Sysco below.
The four most important things that Farm Fresh Produce identifies are: freshness, healthiness, tastiness and “local-ness” of the produce. Here’s the Vision Statement they create and shares with employees, customers and farmers alike:
“We help the families of Main Town live happier and healthier lives by providing the freshest, tastiest and most nutritious local produce: From local farms to your table in under 24 hours.”
For Sysco it is really succinct yet creates a vast picture of business growth and expansionism. One must first understand some general business terms to really understand the size and scope of Sysco’s vision tied off right inline with the mission

Sysco’s Vision is to be the global leader of the efficient multi-temperature food product value chain. We purchase from a multitude of growers, Manufacturers and Processors, and market and distribute more than 360,000 food and related products and Services to more than 400,000 customers- all with a single mission of helping our customers succeed.

Now create your own vision statement To create a vision statement it could help to fill in the blanks of the sentence below:

Within the next ___ years grow ______________________ (company/department name) into a ______________________ (type of company) providing ______________________ (description of products/services) to ______________________ (description of target customer/clients) with annual sales of $ ________.

Review

The first step in creating a mission is to have a USP.
A vision statement helps to create the first step towards achieving the results you truly desire.
Organizations without clarity of vision often are focus purely on financial goals, resulting in the neglect to the long term objectives
Strategies become less about long term innovation and intent and more on reactive tasks (putting out fires).

Work Smarter. Take Control of Your Workload.
Personal time management skills are essential skills for effective people.

Restautant Owner

• Time Management
• Beating Procrastination
• Effective Scheduling
• Resources and Books to read
The heart of time management is an important shift in focus to:
Concentrate on results, not on being busy
Many people spend their days in a frenzy of activity, but achieve very little, (I call this putting out Fires) because they’re not concentrating their effort on the things that matter the most. Basically if you have to put the same “fire” out more then 3 times you have a hole in your internal business structure / systems
Great Book on understanding and important verses urgent is
“First Things First” By Steven Covey and Roger Merrill.
The 80:20 Rule
This is neatly summed up in the Pareto Principle, or the ‘80:20 Rule’. This says that typically 80% of unfocussed effort generates only 20% of results. This means that the remaining 80% of results are achieved with only 20% of the effort. While the ratio is not always 80:20, this broad pattern of a small proportion of activity generating non-scalar returns recurs so frequently that it is the norm in many situations. This brings up the Book the “Four Hour Work Week” By Tim Ferriss. The basic premise is to focus on the 3 most critical tasks that need to be accomplished for the day Do them first and everything else is gravy (my Words)
Beating Procrastination
Manage Your Time. Get the Important Done.
The key to controlling and combating this destructive behavior is to recognize when you start procrastinating, I use the term selective procrastination and actually apply it to my stop doing list, but lets understand why it happens (even to the best of us), by understanding the basis for procrastination we can take active steps to better manage our time and outcomes.
Why do we Procrastinate?
In a nutshell, you procrastinate when you put off things that you should be focusing on right now, usually in favor of doing something that is more enjoyable (pain vs pleasure) or that you’re more comfortable doing. (Learning new things that we have ever done before sends our brain into a fight of flight mode thus creating a feeling of discomfort towards pressing forward with our projects)
Procrastinators work as many hours in the day as other people (and often work longer hours) but they invest their time in the wrong tasks. Sometimes this is simply because they don’t understand the difference between urgent tasks and important tasks, and jump straight into getting on with urgent tasks that aren’t actually important.
They may feel that they’re doing the right thing by reacting fast. To the urgent
1. Or they may not even think about their approach and simply be driven by the person whose demands are loudest.
2. Another common cause of procrastination is feeling overwhelmed by the task. You may not know where to begin.
3. Or you may doubt that you have the skills or resources you think you need. So you seek comfort in doing tasks you know you’re capable of completing.
Other causes of procrastination might include:
• Waiting for the “right” mood or the “right” time to tackle the important task at hand
• A fear of failure or success (yup that tricky brain)
• Poor organizational skills (planning)
• Perfectionism (“I don’t have the right skills or resources to do this perfectly now, so I won’t do it at all.”)
(All of these reasons come down to not planning)
Overcoming Procrastination:
Whatever the reason behind procrastination, it is important to know what your brain is doing, recognized and create a strategy to deal with and overcome it before your project is derailed.
Step 1: Recognize that you’re Procrastinating
You know when you’re procrastinating!
Some useful indicators which will help you pull yourself up as soon as you start procrastinating include:
• Filling your day with unimportant non urgent (employ selective procrastination) from your To Do List; (delegate)
• Reading an e-mail or request that you’ve noted in your notebook or on your To Do List more than once. Schedule email time 2-3 times a day with a very strict timeline to address these. This will force you to only work on the important.
• Sitting down to start a high-priority task, and almost immediately going off to make a cup of coffee or check your e-mails; (been there done that)
• Leaving an item on your To Do list for a long time, (wrong use of selective procrastination) even though you know it’s important;
• Saying “Yes” to unimportant tasks that others ask you to do, and filling your time with these instead of getting on with the important tasks already on your list.
Step 2: WHY Do You Procrastinate
Common causes of procrastination were discussed in detail above, but they can often be reduced to two main reasons:
• You find the task unpleasant; or
• You find the task overwhelming
(Redundant but important)
Step 3: Just Do It
If you are putting something off because you just don’t want to do it, and you really can’t delegate the work to someone else, you need to find ways of motivating yourself to get moving. Get over it!!!
• Make up your own rewards.
• Ask someone else to check up on you. Peer pressure works (the 12 step program)
• Identify the unpleasant consequences of NOT doing the task.
• Shame yourself into getting going? (It is what you are getting paid for)
• Break the project into a set of smaller, more manageable tasks.
• Start with some quick, small tasks if you can, even if these aren’t the logical first actions.
(This creates a momentum that will carry over to the rest of the project. Before you know it you will be totally engrossed in its completion)
Action Planning!!
Plan Your Work. Work Your Plan.
An Action Plan is a simple list of all of the tasks that you need to carry out to achieve an objective. It differs from a To Do List, in that it focuses on the achievement of a single goal. Employ the SCHEMES method to identify all of your needs to reach your objective
• Space
• Cash
• Helpers / People
• Equipment
• Materials
• Expertise
• Systems
Scheduling is the process by which you look at the time available to you, and plan how you will use it to achieve the goals you have identified. By using a schedule properly, you can:
• Understand what you can realistically achieve with your time;
• Plan to make the best use of the time available;
• Leave enough time for things you absolutely must do; (Big Rocks)
• Preserve contingency time to handle ‘the unexpected’; and
• Minimize stress by avoiding over-commitment to others.
To draw up an action plan, simply list the tasks that you need to carry out to achieve your goal, in the order that you need to complete them. Then work backwards to create a action plan schedule. Sounds simple?
I start at the end and work backwards by month, break down by week, then by day and then by hour.
A well thought-through schedule allows you to manage your project/work, while still leaving you time to do the things that are important to you.
How to Use this as a Tool:
Scheduling your plan is best done on a regular basis, for example at the start of every week. Go through the following steps in preparing your schedule:
1. Identify the time you want have to work on your project
2. Block in the actions That absolutely must happen ( cannot build my site until I create an organized layout and design)
3. Review your To Do List, and schedule in only high-priority, urgent activities, based upon you action plan
4. Next, block in appropriate contingency time
5. leave space in your schedule gives your the flexibility to rearrange and react effectively to urgent issues.
6. What you now have left is your “discretionary time”: the time available to deliver your priorities and achieve your goals.
By the time you reach step 6, you may find that you have little or no discretionary time available. If this is the case, then revisit the assumptions you used in the first five steps. Question whether things are absolutely necessary, whether they can be delegated, or whether they can be done in an abbreviated way..
Plan Your Work: Work Your Plan
Key points:
The heart of time management is an important shift in focus to:Concentrate on results, not on being busy
Whatever the reason behind procrastination, it is important to know what your brain is doing, recognized and create a strategy to deal with and overcome it before your project is derailed.
Scheduling is the process by which you plan your use of time. By scheduling effectively, you can reduce stress and maximize your effectiveness.
Action Planning is a list of steps to reach an objective or goal
Before you can schedule efficiently, you need an effective scheduling system. This can be a diary, calendar, paper-based organizer, PDA or a software package like MS Outlook. The best solution depends entirely on your circumstances.