Supply Chain: 4 Essential Year End Questions to Ask Yourself [Infographic]

by Fronetics | Jan 14, 2015 | Blog, Leadership, Strategy, Supply Chain

Don’t start the year without asking these 4 essential questions.

Well, another year has come and gone. Out with the old, in with the new, right? Wait, not so fast. Don’t overlook the valuable information you can glean from conducting a year end review. Use these four questions as a guide to thoughtfully assess the past year. Then, read on to see how a few simple tasks can help shape your best year ever.

1. What were my biggest accomplishments this year?

Twelve months can seem like a long time when you consider everything that happened over the course of the last 365 days. Setting aside some time to review successful projects, notes of thanks from clients, or a particularly positive performance review reminds us what we’re capable of achieving and gives us a renewed sense of accomplishment.

Try this: This year, designate a file folder near your workspace to collect any materials or notes related to your successes as they occur. Doing so will make it easier for you to recall your accomplishments and provide quick access to a list of your achievements – helpful for a healthy dose of motivation or last-minute performance reviews.

2. How satisfied are you with the past year?

Were you successful in meeting the majority of your goals? Do you feel that you worked to your highest potential? Would you have done something differently? What about missed opportunities? Examining what went right and identifying areas for growth and opportunity are powerful exercises that both prevent the recurrence of negative behaviors and reinforce our commitment to our priorities.

Try this: Adding some context to your experiences presents a more accurate picture of your year by tempering unusual highs and lows. Thinking about your experiences of the past year in sum, try to assign a value to your entire year. How would you rate your year on a scale from 1 to 10? 1 to 100? Why?

3. Is my current daily routine structured to optimize time for my priorities?

It’s easy to fall victim to time suckers, especially when they become ingrained into your routine. Has your daily 15 minute coffee break gradually morphed into 25 minutes? Are your 10 minute “headline scans” now closer to 30 minutes? These small, seemingly innocent extensions can snowball into major time loss, causing unnecessary panic as you scramble to meet deadlines.

Try this: The start of a new year is a great time to reset (or rethink) our daily routines. Build activities into your day. If you’d like to continue your now-daily 25 minute coffee break, think about extending your work day by 25 minutes. Feeling like you can’t absorb everything news-worthy in less than 30 minutes? Set your morning alarm 30 minutes earlier so you can arrive to work having already completed your scan of daily headlines. By taking a hard look at where your time is actually going and then spending a few minutes realigning your daily routine with your priorities, you’re intentionally and consciously assigning time to the things you find the most important.

4. What is it that I want to achieve next year?

Each new year brings with it a renewed energy to being our best selves. In order to get started, we need to define our priorities and what our success will look like. Setting SMART goals, or goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely, keeps us moving forward by providing detail and assigning accountability.

Try this: After reviewing your past year, set aside some time to consider what you’ll set out to achieve this year. Create a detailed roadmap to successful completion of your goals.

Use this infographic to help you set, and achieve your SMART goals.

How was your year in review? What were your biggest accomplishments? Are there any goals that you’ll carry over into the new year? Do you regularly set aside time at the close of a year to reflect? We’d love to hear what you do to reset for a new year.

How Fronetics does inbound marketing

by Fronetics | Dec 25, 2014 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy

Fronetics Strategic Advisors is a management consulting firm focused on strategy and inbound marketing. When it comes to inbound marketing we take a different approach than other firms. This is because of our business experience and background. We know ROI is important, so our approach is data driven and produces results.

What is inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing is very different from traditional, or outbound, marketing. Inbound marketing focuses on creating quality content that attracts people to your company and product. By aligning the content you publish with your customer’s interests, you attract the right traffic – traffic that you can then convert, close, and delight over time. Outbound marketing, in contrast, uses methods including: buying ads, buying email lists, and cold calling.

Inbound marketing works

Research conducted by HubSpot found that inbound marketing is more effective than outbound marketing:

200% average ROI;
62% lower cost head;
15% increase in top line revenue.

Freight logistics company Cerasis decided to make the switch from outbound marketing to inbound marketing. Within 25 months the company gained 98 new customers and increased revenue by 14%.

Our approach

Strategy matters. A 2014 study of B2B marketers found that companies who have a documented content strategy in place are more likely to consider their efforts to be effective than companies who do not have a documented strategy in place (60 percent vs. 11 percent). We work with our clients’ to develop a strategy that is right for their company. We then work with our clients’ to implement the strategy.

Here’s what we do:

What now?

We understand that developing and implementing an inbound marketing strategy can seem daunting. We are here to help. We are happy to take a few minutes and look at your current strategy and give you ideas on how to start, or suggestions on what you can do to make your current strategy more successful. We are also happy to talk with you about what we can do.

If you are, like many other people, stretched for time and also struggle with strategy and execution, we can also talk to you about what Fronetics does and how we can help. We know some people prefer to do it themselves, and others prefer to outsource.

We’d love to talk with you about how you can grow your business through inbound marketing.

LinkedIn generates more B2B leads than any other social network

by Fronetics | Dec 18, 2014 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy

Oktopost, a social media marketing platform, analyzed over 100,000 posts on four different social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+) and found that LinkedIn is the most effective social network for B2B.

Oktopost found that more than 80% of B2B leads were generated through LinkedIn. Lead generation through other social networks paled in comparison: