It’s Not Too Late To Shore-up Your CY2022 Planning
It’s never too late to act. Making time for planning and team building will set the foundation for a successful year ahead. Here are six things to think about that may help!
A new year can bring renewed enthusiasm to start with a clean slate, wrap up programs or improve upon projects that you didn’t have time to address between the busy holidays and end-of-year reports. A refreshed attitude and focus is great; what better way to capitalize on your team’s energy than to take stock of your planning, budget, and resources for the upcoming year around your customer advocacy program?
Many departmental teams mean to start their planning in November and December, but despite best intentions other activities, projects, or even unapproved budgets often cause roadblocks to progress. But there is good news! January and February can be even better for planning.
Why?
Budgets will be confirmed or are closer to completion. Groups that need customer involvement may have their planning underway so your team can put more “meat” around customer advocacy recruitment and the proactive development of co-marketing plans with top tier advocates.
Our Referential team got together recently and did exactly this. A good framework for planning is important to ensure outcomes meet objectives. Here are some things to think about that may help your planning:
Go “offsite” and be together!
This is a bit harder to do in COVID times, but our team found a space that allowed for us to be physically together while maintaining safe distancing and precautions. It was a great way for us to establish goals and objectives and assign roles and responsibilities. It may be a given, but yes- we played around with some team-building fun too. One of the intrinsic benefits of offsite planning is to forge trust, friendships, and non-scheduled hang-time. Advocacy is all about relationship building after all, and this is as important internally with your team as it is with the customers you serve. Ultimately, it energizes your team and pays dividends throughout the year.
Create a realistic agenda and stick to it!
If you have been to department planning offsites before, you realize that agendas can deviate quickly. With that in mind, ensure adequate time is provided for each topic. It’s also important to add in sufficient breaks, and establish time for the team to get some of their daily work in. No one likes to experience the frustration of an ill-maintained agenda.
Make time for customer advocacy topics that are important to discuss such as:
Metrics to capture program success.
Program promotion plan across the year to keep the program in the forefront of colleagues’ minds so they leverage customers in as many ways as possible.
Communication plans for sales and marketing to leverage established processes.
Most important: align with stakeholders about what they want out of the program.
Get some good brainstorming time in!
The customer advocacy space is evolving quickly. Discussions to learn about new tools and/or programs offered around building or maintaining your program are therefore important. Speak to your various teams and members about ways to educate your customers on program benefits. Free-flowing chats have a tendency to stimulate some of the best new styles to freshen your approach. Also, your team will enjoy changing things up and creating a stronger impact.
Finally, play some competitive non-work related games!
Speaking from experience, here: When teams work hard all year long, it’s always nice to do something together that doesn’t center around what you do at your desk. If it’s not a game, make sure there’s a focus of some kind on getting to know each other better. A fun example of our own team in the midst of such a game can be seen, below.
It’s never too late to act. You’ll find that making time for planning and team building will set the foundation for a successful year ahead. Happy New Year!
How many M&Ms do you think you could move from bowl #1 to those bowls at the table in the background in 60 seconds? Our champion got over 40!
