DISSC Steps 4 and 5: Specify and Communicate Your Action Plan

 
As we complete our series on the DISSC Model for Rapid Results in your marketing, we address the last 2 steps in the process.

The first thing to consider in creating your action plan is how you are going to track the progress of how well your strategy is working to achieve your selected goal.

In our last post, we addressed your ‘break-even point’ and the importance of tracking the marketing costs and return on investment.

As well as these metrics, there are other things to monitor that will indicate whether or not the strategy is working.

As there are many metrics available to choose from, the best thing to do is select 3 or 4 that give you the clarity you need.

Here are several metric examples that you may wish to track.

• Conversion of traffic to leads and leads to sales
• Conversion of calls to appointments
• Conversion of appointments to presentations
• Conversion of presentations to sales
• Cost per lead
• Cost per appointment
• Cost per presentation
• Cost per sale
• Revenue per new customer
• Revenue per established customer
• Email open rates
• Engagement metrics, likes, shares, clicks, comments.
• Traffic from social media pages to website landing pages
• Lead magnet downloads and new subscribers

As you can see, there are many options to choose from, but you don’t want to be spending your time needlessly. So, prioritize your list and identify the top 3 or 4 that give you what you are looking for and move on.

Monitor your metrics at least once a week and add it to your to-do list as part of your plan.

List the Resources You Will Need

Let’s take a look at the resources you may need to move ahead with your action plan. These could include:

People: This is a big one as you may (or may not) need help to implement your plan. Do you have staff that can assist you? Can you outsource specific things to freelancers, contractors, or virtual help? Will technology help?

Tools: Will you need any tools such as software, computers, physical tools and so on to implement your plan?

Training: Do you or your team members need to learn new skills? Who will do the training?

Coaching: Will you need ongoing coaching for yourself or your team?

Money: What will the costs be – tool costs, software, license fees, advertising costs, people costs, training, coaching etc.?

Budget: As we discussed in our prior post, you will need to create a budget for all of this.

Once you have this, look closely at the marketing strategy you have chosen and make that final choice to move ahead. Your budget may indicate that you may have to set your preferred strategy aside for one that is basically more affordable. In any case, this is the time to make the final decision as to what direction you are taking.

Identify the Tasks in Your Plan

Here’s where the rubber hits the road. It’s time to make this happen.

You now need to select the 5 high-level tasks that are key to getting the job done. For example, if your strategy is to use Facebook Advertising to produce fresh leads, your main tasks for your plan might be:

• Design a ‘Lead Magnet’. This is “a free item or service that is given away for the purpose of gathering contact details; for example, lead magnets can be trial subscriptions, samples, white papers, e-newsletters, and free consultations.” (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lead-magnet.asp)
• Create a marketing funnel.
• Develop your ‘auto-responder’ follow-up emails.
• Create your ad to drive traffic to your landing page and set it up on the Facebook/Meta platform.
• Monitor your conversion and cost/ROI metrics.

Once you have these high-level key tasks, list the steps for each task in more detail. For example, the step 2 task above is ‘create a marketing funnel’. The more detailed tasks to achieve this would include:

• Design and develop your website landing/opt-in page,
• Design and develop your ‘thank you’ page,
• Create your download page,
• Select your marketing automation program and setup your lists.

For each of these tasks, set a deadline, allocate who is responsible, list any additional resources that might be required, and diarize dates for reviewing the progress.

You may be a one-person business or have a team of several employees. Either way, I suspect you may be thinking that your time is better spent on other activities, and you need assistance to implement this marketing process.

So, whether you have employees or not, you may well end up with a team that needs to be kept on focus as you implement this process, and this makes good communication essential.

As you are no doubt aware, ‘verbal communication’ is not just telling. It is also hearing, and for various reasons, people do not always hear what you intend them to. Consequently, it is vital to create documents that detail everything clearly and can be used as a reference throughout the process.

Your documentation should include:

1. The goal that will be the target for the next 3 months
2. The one strategy you will engage in pursuit of achieving the goal
3. The detailed action plan including the time deadlines and person responsible for completion
4. All the tools and resources required and how you will get them
5. What success looks like
6. The metrics and how progress will be measured during the 3 months

You can supply printed copies to your team members, but in this digital age you can create files that can be accessed by everyone and updated as needed.

Good communication is also two way and getting feedback from team members is important to the process as they will have ideas and even knowledge that will help in setting SMART goals.

Keep Your Team Focused and Engaged

Communication will be the key in making this work. Here are some tips to keeping your team focused and engaged.

1. Involve them and listen closely to what they say as they all have a stake in the game.
2. Maintain 2-way communication throughout the project.
3. Don’t overwhelm them with complexity. Keep it as concise as possible.
4. Delegate the right tasks to the right person.
5. Create standard procedures that are consistent across the team.
6. Use to-do lists throughout the team.
7. You manage what you measure so review regularly and keep people accountable.

Conclusion

Throughout this series we have addressed each of the steps in the DISSC marketing process. They are:

Step 1: Define your foundation
Step 2: Identify your number 1 goal
Step 3: Select your number 1 strategy
Step 4: Specify your action plan
Step 5: Communicate team-wide.

As we said in the introduction to the series, the DISSC process is designed to help you focus on one goal and one strategy at a time over a three-month period to get better results than when you try multiple strategies at once.

So now you have the information to list the actions you need to take to start implementing your plan.

By the way, members of the Self Employed Business Academy have access to the full ‘Rapid Results Marketing Formula’ course on which this series is based. If you are not a member of the Academy, you can give it a try for just $1 and get the Action Guide, Action Planner and Team Communication Templatewith the course. Click here to get access now!