I recently took a great holiday with the family in Fiji.  It was been terrific in many ways including the ability to relax, reflect and recharge.  One thing I find on holidays is that I have time to think and really “empty the cup” to allow ideas, blogs and other game changing concepts to come to the fore.

One of the areas I found myself reflecting on was been the launch of our new coaching programs in easyconsult and easygovernment.  What I have been analysing is the things in the last twelve months that have worked well, those that haven’t and the key actions and strategies that we need to apply this new financial year to really ensure we continue to get the market penetration and marketing activities far more focussed on those clients that will benefit from it and are prepared to see the value these programs provide.

In the last twelve months particularly with marketing easyconsult, we have trialled many initiatives including social media, sponsorships of associations, direct sales and other activities.  It has been interesting to see what has worked well and what has not.  This is part of the journey of starting a new business which I appreciate but we would be silly not to take heed of what changes we need to make in the future to ensure it continues to build towards our targets.

One of my insights with this came when sitting outside on my hotel balcony and seeing the fishing boats go out to sea with the goal of catching plenty of fish.   When loading up the boat and launching, they don’t go to places where they are not going to catch fish.  They will go to places where there are fish that are hungry, biting and ready to be caught.

This is no different with business.  We can spend a lot of time chucking out our line in to ponds or in consulting land in to conferences or social media sites where our clients might hang out but there are no guarantees.  We can also mass market through email or other forums and hope to catch a couple of “fish”.  These initiatives as we have found may work but it is unlikely to fill our boat.

Although a lot of our initiatives have had positive responses there is always room for improvement and we will adapt our approach towards client activities and events where the fish are hungry and see the value of what we do.  This will mean sponsorship agreements with associations that have clients who already see the value, undertaking speaking engagements more because we know this gets our message out, continuing to write informative blogs because people value them and working with clients who are happy to market the good work we do.

It may be worth thinking about where you are fishing as a consultant over the next couple of months this new financial year.   For me, it has been a valuable exercise as our time, energy and funding is limited.   We need to maximise where we put our lines, what bait we use and whether or not the fish are biting!