You've probably heard the “only handle it once” principle in productivity where you should strive to only handle paperwork or emails one time and deal with them fully rather than keep returning to them and doing a crappy job each time.

I've found a similar principle to apply to a lot of marketing too. I like to call it the “Work Hard Once” principle (a phrase I first heard from Taki Moore).

I was reminded of the principle when I ran a webinar for recently on follow-up systems. Follow-up is a great example of “Work Hard Once”.

What normally happens with follow-up is we meet someone (or we send them a proposal or they become a client or any number of situations then need follow-up). We know we should be following up. After all, the majority of sales takes multiple contacts before your potential client will be ready to buy.

But more often than not we try to “wing it” with follow-up.

We have the meeting and the next day we think “what should I do to follow-up?”. And we shoot off an email or something.

Then if we're lucky, a couple of weeks later we remember the meeting and realise we've not heard back. So we try to think of something else we can do to keep in touch. If we're pushed for time, we often end up with another email saying “just checking up” or “have you made a decision yet?”.

Hardly the kind of inspiring follow-up that will build credibility and strengthen our relationship.

The problem is that we're trying to do important stuff like this on the fly when we're busy. So we do a half-arsed job of it.

It's inevitable when we're under pressure. No one does their best creative thinking when they're pushed for time.

What we need to do is have the strength to take time out every now and then to do our important thinking. To “work hard once” on creating a template or process that we can then tweak and re-use again and again later.

In this case we should brainstorm the different situations where we're likely to need to follow-up and then create some decent templates (emails, ideas for phone calls or letters or other things to do) that we can reuse with minor tailoring every time we get into those situations.

Work hard once to come up with a great template, then use it time and time again. Rather than reinventing the wheel (badly) every time.

What are the marketing tasks you do again and again that would benefit from taking time out and creating templates for so that you do them brilliantly every time without having to constantly rethink everything?

Work hard once on these and you'll be repaid many times over.