One simple way to add structure to your marketing is to create an overall plan that outlines for you exactly what you hope to accomplish and when. You can then supplement this with shorter-term, action-oriented "to-do" lists aimed at reaching your marketing goals.

Here's how I keep my marketing efforts pointed forward:

1. Every year, I create a short list of "Calendar Year Objectives"--goals I want to achieve by year's end. I usually give each goal a name, and then write two or three sentences describing what achieving that goal should look like. For example, an objective might be to write a book, followed by title and subject matter, and by what date I hope to get it done. This does not have to be a painful exercise--my list usually fills only half a page.

Harvesters are great sales people of world. These are people that don’t mind, may even enjoy, spending two or three hours a day cold calling. They willingly spend a day starting at first floor of an office building and visiting every office on every floor to try and get an appointment. Harvesters will close business. However, they also tend to leave a lot of green fruit on tree because their approach is geared towards those individuals who have a need now and are willing and able to purchase – so called low hanging fruit. Harvesters tend to move from orchard to orchard seeking out and picking whatever fruit is ripe at time. They are constantly seeking out a new orchard that might have ripe fruit.

Cultivators tend to rely on other elements of promotional mix such as advertising, direct mail, networking and public relations activities to develop business. Cultivators prepare soil, plant seeds, nurture seedlings, and provide care to fruit as it ripens. They grow their own orchards so they have an ongoing supply of ripe fruit. However, Cultivators sometimes are so busy tending to orchard that they forget to pick fruit, leaving it either for Harvesters as they make their daily rounds or to rot on tree.

Clearly, in an ideal world Cultivators and Harvesters would work together to assure a constant supply of ripe fruit and to be sure that ripe fruit is picked daily before a competitor picks it or it spoils. That is why in large corporations you will find both a marketing function and a sales function. However, most small businesses don’t have luxury of two separate functions. Many small business owners have to both cultivate and harvest new business as well as oversee or even implement myriad of other functions required to keep a business going.