A company executive who never had any free time said, ?Strategic planning? No time for that.? How true ? the man was much too busy the cause of him being so busy is simply because he had chosen not to invest in a strategic planning process. It is like the chicken and the egg ? business managers are too busy to consider any planning yet without planning they will remain busy.? For clarity; busy is not the same as successful or making money.
Does your business stand out from the competition?
Many business owners are action-oriented people who just want to push ahead with the job. They commonly think that ?planning? is something that big corporations can do because lots of people who can do it.? If you ask who is their market ? ?everyone? and why people buy from them ? ?quality and low price?.? That thinking ensures, the company is just like the vast majority of the competitors in the industry which means they do not differentiate.
If there is no well developed strategic or business plan, their business will be little more anything other than a job.? There may be some employees but the business is likely to have lower sales than it could, make reduced profits than it should be and be less efficient than is necessary.
Put simply, a good strategic planning framework will identify the ideal market to target (not ?everyone?), how to position your company in the mind of those potential customers so that you are not cheap and significantly, the processes to make it all happen.
What is business strategic planning
A large problem for business owners in beginning a planning process is not knowing what they should do or how to go about creating the strategic plan.? They probably started their business using a trade they had learned. However business planning is not taught in college so most people have very little idea of the principles or business tools they can use.
Other issues are that most people are too involved in their company and are emotionally attached to it to take an objective view of the industry and the methods of delivering the product to that market. So the best solution is to invest in a strategic planning consulting service.
What can a strategic planning consultant offer?
Competent business consultants will take the owners and executives through a strategy planning process employing proven planning tools and strategic planning models.
These will identify the main skills of the business and how you can be different from the competitors in your market.? Remember that there are many other firms who offer a almost the same product or service so simply claiming your company is the best at plumbing, financial planner or tyre shop does not differentiate you.
The planning process will help focus your target from ?everyone? to one where you can stand out as the expert in that area such as a plumber for office blocks, a financial planner for 40 year old business owners or a tyre fitter for performance cars.? Suddenly, your market will recognise you as the specialist for that service which means that you are competing against fewer competitors.
The last element for a successful strategic plan and this is what those action-oriented company owners love to hear, is the implementation plan.
There is no point having a wonderful plan if no-one implements it.
A poor plan well implemented will out-perform a great plan badly executed.
Therefore a critical component of a business planning process is to assess resources to see if they can meet the aims and targets.
??? ?Is there enough equipment?
??? ?Do you have the right people?
??? ?Do you have enough capital?
??? ?Does the plan make a good rate of return?
The last part of the plan is measurement?? Without measuring you cannot have any notion of your progress.
Effective companies have one thing in common
Picking each of those factors ? identifying your target market, positioning the business as the obvious option for that market and a well resourced implementation plan ? are the bedrock to a profitable business.
A great strategic plan will not guarantee you a successful company.? But without a strategic plan, you are guaranteed to fail.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.