I was struck by how much one can be thrown off when things are out of sync.

We have a large hanging clock in our house that I will regularly check for the time. While getting ready for dinner at a restaurant the other night I checked the clock before I left and had five minutes to spare. I was caught off guard when the clock in the car showed that it was ten minutes later than I had been led to believe when leaving the house. I made the dinner meeting, apologized for my tardiness and we all moved on. However, the whole event could have been avoided if only I had checked to make sure my clock was in sync.

Like so many things in life, we take for granted that things are working like they should.

Often businesses start a marketing program and just continue to plow ahead, never checking to see if their actions are in sync with what the customer wants. I am not advocating that one micromanage every aspect of the program at all times, but I am suggesting that you check the progress of your marketing plans against benchmarks or goals to see how the program is progressing. If your business has yet to set goals or benchmarks, establish some now and measure your future successes against those targets.

There is no reason that you should wait until your clock is ten minutes out of sync, or your marketing dollars are all spent for the quarter, to make sure that things are working as they should.