This column is a continuation of Part I and Part II , previously published.

Step Five: Develop Strategies, Selecting the Most Viable Ones

A strategy is the plan of how you will use what you have to reach a goal. There are countless strategies, but you have to pick just a few, so you choose the ones most likely to succeed in reaching your goal(s). They must be consistent with one another and support the objectives they are supposed to help achieve. They involve policies, procedures and programs.

A policy broadly defines an action or approach to use. They often involve self-imposed restrictions. For example, you want to reduce costs in putting in a new sidewalk leading up to the back door entrance to your realty office building. However, your personal policy is to support the needs of impaired people in wheelchairs ... so you spend more money than you normally would in building a terrific ramp offering them access directly from the parking lot. A policy is often an exception to what is otherwise a rule.

A procedure is like the operating instruction you get with a new tool or product to assemble. It tells you exactly how it will be done.

A program answers who, what, where, when, and how factors needed to reach a particular goal, plus usually, the budget.

You can generate strategies from a whim or intuition, or better yet, from careful study of what's available to you, based on your research and reports from members of your team. Be sure to generate many strategies so you explore a wide range of possibilities and don't just knee-jerk yourself and everyone else into the first "great idea" that pops up. Encourage many "devil's advocates," both inside and outside of the team or company.

Some strategies for teams of realty agents might include:

• Constantly hammer home in ads how we are special. We are the (what?) realty team.

• Establish a mentoring program internally so our new agents "get with it" sooner.

• Hire web-savvy agents to back up our Internet claims of being first on the Web, locally.

• Heavily reinforce that we support local non-profit groups and donate to them.

• Assign one team member to gather statistics having strategic marketing value to us.

• Develop separate ad campaigns for each of our target audiences in the correct media.

When all the strategies are in, they need to be time-framed on paper in a master schedule so that it becomes apparent what elements dovetail and what ones overlap. Sufficient lead-time is then built-in for designing ads and mailers, hiring direct mail firms, door-hanger distribution firms and other outsourcing groups needed for a coordinated promotion. Never rush a promotion just to meet a deadline.

But wait -- we're not done with strategies just yet. They need to each be broken up into their sub-programs, which can include advertising, publicity, sales promotion, charity work, coordination with the Chamber of Commerce/other local non-profits, special seasonal promotions, routine recurring tasks, budgets, etc. These then need to be time-framed and individually costed-out within the larger period of the master schedule.

You will also need to assign person-hours to each strategy, based on the personnel available. Above all, make each activity in the master program assigned to an individual by name. This establishes responsibility for actually getting things done. Without doing this, little will get done. Trust me.

Tactics come into play, too. To have a sale at your store is a tactic. To set yourself up as a discount store is a strategy.

Too many firms spend hours in long strategy meetings agonizing about what to do next. Traditionally, firms who spend a lot of time in strategy meetings are not very good planners. They often have a siege mentality because they ARE constantly under siege by competitors in "me-too" kinds of markets. But it is quite easy to turn the tables on an entrenched competitor in a "me-too" marketplace if you use the right tactics. Lacking them, you get nowhere.

To find good tactics, usually you have to discover those things that you can do that your competitor can't. And when you employ those things, they are often referred to as "guerrilla tactics." Typically, firms are too close to the trees to spot potential guerrilla marketing tactics. That's often why they bring in an outside consultant who can see the forest better, i.e. clearly and objectively.

Good planners, however, don't etch their plans in concrete. They are willing to try new things as opportunities present themselves. Compared to doing nothing new to market products, it is often better to "fire, ready, aim" than it is to "ready, aim, fire."

Write down who does what and who reports to who on each program, so everyone knows the chain of command before strategies get launched.

When you have the overall master program done, write it all out and distribute it to everyone on your team. Invite them to comment, make suggestions, changes, and mark it all up for you.

Sound like work? Well, few will do everything here, but this at least shows you the scope of program planning that hardly anyone, except larger firms, does anymore. Still, you are now starting to see what goes into the preparation of a true marketing plan and you can adopt from this material as you see fit.

Step Six: The Marketing Plan Written Out

There are no rules here for length. A successful and complete plan is one that meets the requirements and objectives of your operation. Most realty teams, even entire offices or regions of a franchised realty firm, lack a comprehensive marketing plan, so don't feel bad if you've never had one before. Most firms just do the same old thing, year after year, never stopping to even brain storm, let alone research, what they MIGHT be doing better.

Bottom line? Plans should make it clear what each person should be doing at all times during the year, working towards the success of one or many strategies, objectives or goals. Studies show that the simplest plans are often the best ones.

Just be sure to make sub-plans for each broad category such as advertising, public relations, publicity, sales promotion, direct mail, etc., and a budget for each that is based on the strategies that you have approved.

Step Seven: Telling Others about the Plan and Getting it Going

Sadly, many firms research, write and print up beautiful marketing plans, introduce them with grandeur, then forget all about them a few days later and go back to the same thing they were doing before. However, remember the definition of insanity: "Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time."

Well, if what you have been doing has not been working, it is time to do something different ... maybe radically different. That's where a careful assessment of your operation, a search for new possibilities, and a marketing plan that takes advantage of those possibilities, may be right for you. Best of all, you don't have to wait till year's end ... you can begin today.

The marketing plan sets the direction for your company for a specified period and assigns responsibilities to individuals who will make the plan work (or not). Personnel will be more likely to accept your plan if they had a part early on in helping develop it, which is why you use "bottoms-up" research results and input, that they provide, rather than "top-down" dictating by you and other bosses when making one of these plans.

In some companies, only parts of the marketing plan, once finalized, need be given to certain members of the team, if security or privacy is an issue. In such cases, people only need to get the part that concerns them and any attendant budget. A semi-formal meeting, perhaps in the clubroom of a local restaurant, is good to conduct in presenting the basic final plan to everyone. If you don't make it a big deal, they won't either.

Step Eight: Controls Should Be Built In

Controls are needed to assess where performance currently resides in relation to where the marketing plan said it SHOULD be at a given time. Remember, you do not control dollars or schedules or standards; you control the people who are responsible for a plan underway. The controls should be easy to use, economical, flexible and objective and include corrective actions and alternate activities if the planned ones reach an impasse.

Control generally involves three parts. Defining the standard, measuring the performance against the standards, and correcting any deviations.

Realty standards are defined in dollar volume, units of sales, sides of realty transactions handled, number of listings, and increase in leads, etc. -- almost anything that can be quantified. Participants should be compelled to turn in timely reports on their assigned activities and make note of deviations from set standards. Take action when needed and do not sweat small deviations unless they portend a trend. Sometimes major deviations simply mean that you set the bar too high to begin with. If this is truly so, alter the plan.

Step Nine: Update the Plan to Meet Changing Circumstances

Nothing stays the same in any marketplace, especially in real estate. A new method of videotaping homes for sale and posting them in minutes on the Internet could virtually overnight replace the current still pictures residing on the pages of MLS listings. If that happened, how would you stay current? If a commercial property investor group wanted you to handle 50 multi-family-dwelling properties and you are 90 percent geared for residential sales, what would you do? Certainly, the condition would require some alteration of your marketing plan and personnel.

In summary, it seems that the hardest part of creating a marketing plan is being honest about what your actual resources are and writing down the truth about where your team, office, company, etc. stands right NOW.

If you and your peers can be honest with that part, then you have a good chance of seeing -- often for the first time -- those future activities that can capitalize on your assets and minimize your weaknesses. A marketing plan is merely the expression of that.

You do not need to do all the things discussed here. Many small firms and individual agents do fine with a single page marketing plan, but the lack of any plan whatsoever is usually chaos and gross lack of direction, so you might consider taking a crack at a marketing plan right now.

A marketing plan is the equivalent of a GPS device that gets you the fastest to where you're going with the least number of wrong turns.