In 20 days at noon, on July 2, 182½ days of the year will have elapsed and 182½ will remain before Jan 1, 2011.

Now is a great time to take a hard look at your marketing systems to see what’s working, what’s not working, what needs to be improved and what needs to scrapped.

That’s exactly what my team and I are doing.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve picked up a few significant pieces of business (believe me, I’m not complaining – we’re blessed) that have required us to more carefully analyze our systems and processes, clients, staffing, quality of work and more.

One of the “more” things we’re reviewing is what has led to our success and how we can refine our systems to not only do a better job for our brand, but also a better job for our clients.

It’s so easy to get caught up in busy work and daily tasks thinking you’re accomplishing things, but at the end of the day you find yourself majoring in minor things without focusing on game changing work along with better planning and performance based processes. Bottom line – you need to block out your time with high value activities!

Our fixed costs, staff and management hierarchy are low, small and flat by design, but with this sudden influx of new business we’re still working hard to clean up our act before considering adding new staff, equipment and even more business.

Here’s a list of our 20 questions to improve our business focus. The list is not necessarily in order and/or exhaustive, but all apply to People, Resources, Innovation, Marketing, Operations and Finance:

  1. How can we improve upon keeping our promises
  2. How do we make our company a more fun and enjoyable place to work
  3. How can we attract high quality people who are proud to work with us
  4. Does everyone have the tools and experience they need to be successful
  5. How do we make our unique selling proposition more unique, meaningful and easier to demonstrate and communicate
  6. How can we reduce costs without impacting our performance
  7. What kinds of clients/industries should we target
  8. What clients should we keep
  9. What clients should we fire
  10. What should be on our “to don’t” list
  11. What are the three key things we can do to improve our client’s business
  12. How can we speed up our efforts to quickly build our client’s business
  13. How can we more effectively surprise and delight our clients
  14. How do we create happier clients willing to provide glowing testimonials
  15. What products and services should we stop offering and/or improve upon
  16. What new products and services (or enhancements) should we be offering
  17. How can we improve cash flow, collections and profitablity
  18. What processes can we automate and systematize to improve performance
  19. How can we better measure every sales action, marketing channel and map every touch point to determine our cost per lead, sales potential and length to close
  20. What are we missing or failing to do with regard to people, resources, innovation, marketing, operations or finance to more profitably build a better business for ourselves and for our clients – what’s holding us back

So there you go – 20 questions to ask yourself over 20 days – one a day!

However, throughout your 20 day journey, here’s the thing to keep in mind.

Net – the big question we’re working on if you boil all 20 questions down into one is simply, “HOW DO WE WOW!”

We’re working on it and know it’s a marathon, not a sprint, but how do you wow?

I’m interested in knowing.