Unless the weather cooperates, the month of December isn''t usually a busy month with respect to revenue generation. Your clients are busy with their holiday preparations and won''t spend money on their plumbing or HVAC systems unless they have to. However, this is a great time to review your business activities for 2006 and plan those for 2007. One of the most significant segments of your business review is the marketing segment. This section defines what you will do to retain current clients and generate new ones.

You have both internal and external clients. Your internal clients are your employees that generate and perform the work for your external clients-your customers, the people who write your paychecks.

Your marketing plan needs to be in two pieces to address both of the groups. First, your internal clients. What is your turnover rate? Once you hire employees who are productive, do they stay or do you have a revolving door? If you have a revolving door, you need to find out why and fix it. It is expensive in terms of times and dollars to continually hire employees.

Are you growing to the point where you need new employees each year? Are you lamenting the fact you can''t find quality employees? Have you reached a point where your competitions'' employees want to work for you and call or come in to see if there are any openings? Before you say this can''t happen, several of the companies that I work with have achieved this. However, it takes a lot of work, a definite career path, listening, and doing what is right both for the external and the internal client.

Ask your employees what they think is good and bad about your company. Ride along with the technicians and go along on some jobs. Ask, "what do we have to do to attract and retain good employees?" Act on their suggestions. You''ll get better and more truthful answers than if you called them into your office and asked.

As a result of these conversations, one of your goals might be to have less than a 5 percent turnover rate. Another might be to have a career path at your company and clear steps for moving from one level to the next. Your employees will tell you what is going on and what they would like to see changed. They are on the front lines. You just have to act on their suggestions.

Next look at your external clients. How many active customers do you have? This number is easy to determine if all you do is new construction work. However, from a service perspective, it''s much more difficult to answer "off the top of your head."

Find out how many customers you have who have done business with you over the past year. How many total customers are on the list? If you are like most contractors the number of total customers will far exceed the number that have done business with you in the past year.

Call some of the customers who you haven''t heard from in a while. Find out why they haven''t used you. Be prepared to find out that they have moved, died, or that they are using another company now in addition to "I just didn''t have a need." Do something to educate them and create a need. After all, they still need their plumbing and HVAC systems checked each year. The results should help you establish your marketing goals for next year.

The next thing to look at is your referrals. How many of your new clients come as a result of a referral? This is the easiest way to grow your client base. A plan in 2007 to increase referrals might be one of your goals.

Hopefully you have tracked your advertising activities throughout the year so you know where your leads are coming from. If you haven''t, this should be a goal for next year. When you track, you know what worked well and what didn''t work at all. Plan to repeat the activities that worked well and determine why the others didn''t work well so that you can either fix the problems or not do them again.

On the public relations front, take a look at all of your non-paid advertising: truck signage, service forms and uniforms as well as donations you made to charitable organizations, articles that appeared in the media, etc. Plan on doing more public relations activities. For example, did the local newspaper report your company as one of the "fastest-growing" in the region recently? Are you setting records with charitable donations to benefit one group or another? Let the media-local newspapers and the trade press-know what''s happening with you. Being written about in the media suddenly makes your company an "expert." Parlay that exposure in your consumer advertising and track your results.

Examine your show results, too. Many times consumer home improvement or home and garden shows are difficult to do because you have to get people to man your booth for a weekend. However, they''re a great source of leads if you are creative in your booth and get people to stop by. One contractor I know gets revenues from these shows a year to two years later. (And of course, he gets some immediate leads). If you have a great booth and have professional and relevant materials there, you''ll find the people who stop by will keep those materials for when they are making their decisions-even if those decisions are 12 to 18 months later.

Your goals should reflect the activities that you want to continue doing in 2007 and those that you want to increase (or decrease) as a result of what you found doing your research. Put them on a piece of paper and post them where everyone can see them. This is easily accomplished with a spreadsheet. Put the weeks of the year on the X-axis and the activities you will accomplish along the Y-Axis. Then put an "X" in the week that you will accomplish that activity. You will remind yourself and your employees what the company is doing in its efforts to retain current clients and generate new ones. Tracking also becomes easy. Simply put the results where the "X" was in the spread sheet.

Planning is critical for marketing success. Spend time in December to ensure you are ready for 2007 with a great plan.