contact your LTC for information on name list purchases. MARKETING OPERATION PLAN Each NRD, with its Area’s guidance, develops and implements annual operations plans according to the Marketing Operations Plan, COMNAVCRUITCOM- INST 3121.2. The Area marketing officer coordinates the  development  of  the  plans.  Each  district  also establishes a marketing council or quality management board (QMB) consisting of key advisors and decision makers. Your input from the station and zone level is a crucial element in the development of the district marketing operations plan. PURPOSE AND BENEFITS The marketing operations plan is designed to identify where we are as a district now and where we are going. It is a usable planning document that reviews the past year’s production and identifies strong points and problem areas. The operations plan is designed to accomplish the following: Stimulates thinking to make better use of available resources Reduces crisis management Assigns responsibilities and schedules work Improves communications within the command Coordinates and unifies efforts Facilitates control, monitoring, and evaluation of results Provides source marketing information for current and future reference Facilitates progressive advancement toward a goal CONSTRUCTION An operations plan has five basic requirements: it must be (1) simple and easy to understand, (2) clear, precise, and detailed to avoid confusion, (3) practical and realistic, (4) flexible, adaptable to change, and (5) complete (cover all significant marketing factors and assign responsibilities). The operations plan includes the enlisted programs plan, the officer programs plan, and an executive summary. Enlisted Programs Plan The enlisted programs plan includes a situation analysis, an evaluation of resource allocation and goal apportionment, and plans of action and milestones (POA&Ms). The EPO will use information from the zone situational analyses and past marketing data to formulate the enlisted programs plan. SITUATION ANALYSIS.– The situation analysis section of the plan will include data on resource projections  and  implications  regarding  production recruiters and operating assets, marketing assumptions and implications, past production and activity analysis, and a final section on strengths and weaknesses. This section is not meant to identify crutches, but rather point out possible hurdles with plans to overcome them. RESOURCE  ALLOCATION  AND  GOAL APPORTIONMENT. – In this section, districts list how they are going to weight market share and recruiter share and the rationale behind the decision. This section is also used to address any subjective considerations used in goaling or RAF manning deviations. PLAN OF ACTION AND MILESTONES. – This is the real heart of the operations plan. All the other steps lead to this point. The POA&Ms are the operations plan in effect. All the analysis sets us up to write down how we are going to logically, methodically, and chronologically accomplish our goals for the coming year. Required enlisted program categories include nonprior service (NPS), nuclear field (NF), minority, DEP, and prior service (R/Z). POA&Ms must be written for these five major programs, at a minimum. The district has the discretion of adding more, if desired. Elements of the POA&M.– Although POA&Ms are unique to the district and program being addressed, they share the same basic elements such as the following: l Objective. Every district’s generic objectives are the same – to improve over last year and meet or exceed all qualitative and quantitative enlisted and officer program requirements. This is understood and does not need to be restated on each POA&M. Specific or secondary objectives should differ somewhat between districts. An example of a district’s specific objectives might be to increase DEP referrals by 50 percent over last year. 5-28