Strategic Planning

By Cyndi Seidler

Planning has long been an integral part of business growth. As your business grows, you need to regroup and update long-term plans. An aggressive plan of action to approach your market involves a strategy and, like most endeavors, requires ongoing planning.

To help you think more creatively, first look at the overall, big picture. Where are you now and where do you want to be? You’ll be undertaking a discovery process that will give you guidelines which lead you to your goals.

The discovery process would involve a review and/or evaluation of the existing situation. If you haven’t already, you may want to survey your customers and public to find out if your product or service has benefited them, if they feel it can be improved in some way, and what suggestions or comments they have about it.

From there, you’ll be armed with information to help you deliver what your public wants and plot a plan of attack. You might then take a look at some other ways to enter your market. Find out other target markets to reach out to. See if your product or service can be used somewhere else to a different niche. Check if you can package your product or service differently. Look at another niche your service or product might fit in with.

Your growth strategy should also include setting profitability objectives. Profitability is measured by the executive’s perspective. Since an executive’s most valuable resource is time, it is necessary to determine how much, in dollars, that time is worth (establishing the value of an hour). Time may well be an executive’s most important asset and, using it wisely, will improve quality of life by helping to find time to spend on other things (without sacraficing income).

In the process of change, also anticipate the staffing needed for growth. If you find yourself trying to do too much, you’ve probably noticed that you’re not doing all of it well, or efficiently. So, take a look at if you are really saving money by not adding personnel.

You should plan your work and work your plan. Know where you are and know where you are going. Your growth plan, if followed, should be designed to get you to the next level of success without dropping anything successful that you’re already doing. It shouldn’t warrant that you stop doing any actions which provided expansion, but it can omit those actions which didn’t produce results.

The evaluation of your business helps you to grow and change to meet new challenges. Establishing clear goals and preparing to adapt to changing markets and technologies is the key to successful business development and growth.

By creating new ideas, strategies, relationships, and operational actions, you can grow a business successfully.

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