You need a wall map. I don't mean one of those maps of the world with a picture of a kangaroo in Australia and a gorilla in central Africa. I mean a wall map relevant to your business district.



Or your campaign district. Most politicians know how vital a wall map is for planning strategy and plotting progress, but few business people have caught on. I talked to Kent Hargesheimer of http://www.geoprinter.com .Here are five reasons he cites that your business could use a wall map:

1. You have people delivering pizzas or crown jewels, political flyers or newspapers? Let your staff instantly find where they are going. Wall maps are ideal for deciding where to go before leaving the store or depot.

2. Wall maps help you plan. You can plot where the competition is, where your customers are...in fact, you can do entire SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis based on geography. If you plot demographic data, such as you might find at http://www.catosphere.com , you can easily see where your best target customers are located.

3. Wall maps can help you define delivery or sales territories to maximize revenues. Use erasable markers to redefine territories as need...such as when you add new customers to the map.

4. A wall map can actually be a draw for walk-in traffic. If your map shows where everything else in the neighborhood is, people will drop in to your store to find out

where other stores and services are located. Even better, let people stick a small colored sticker on the map to "mark their spot"...and gather intelligence from them about where your customers comes from.

5. Local wall maps are a great addition to the office decor. They make your employees feel a little more connected to the community and can also instill a sense of who the customer is and why they are there (to serve the customer, right?)

Before printing a wall map, you will need to design the map. There are many great options available at online software stores, such as http://www.gis4less.com .

Placing a map on the wall is a great sign to show that you are in business and ready to conquer. Just don't try putting up a map of the world...at least, not to start with.