Three Steps to Developing a Strategy
By now, most people have written their New Years’ Resolutions; their annual bucket list, if you will, of items they want to accomplish, lessons they want to learn, or hobbies/traits they want to pick up. It’s the second week of a new year and people want some direction in the next 50 weeks. However, one thing I have seen is many times, business owners forget to refresh their annual business goals.
“To know where you are going, you have to know where you have been.”
Every business owner should take a look back at their last year, review the highs/lows, wins/losses, decisions/lessons, etc. to identify how they should forge ahead into a new year. To help, we have three steps to help you in developing a new business strategy or an annual strategy. The good news is that these steps can be applied throughout the year whenever your business is seeking to start something new.
Step One: Define a Vision
Step Two: Identify Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) & Goals
Step Three: Connect the Dots
Step One: Define Your Vision
DEFINE YOUR VISION – You must first understand what it is you are trying to achieve or accomplish. In order to do so, write out your overall goal. If you are unsure, then take a step back first and think through what would benefit your business most, be the biggest stretch of success, or can be the first step towards a larger goal that may take more time to achieve. An example of a vision would be: This year, we want to increase penetration in our existing markets.
Step Two: Identify KPIs and Goals
IDENTIFY KPIs AND GOALS – Do you understand where your goal line is? Do you know how to achieve your objective? Step Two is all about identifying the steps that you need to achieve the vision you set in Step One by breaking it down into pieces. KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, are measures that help you measure the performance of your objective (See, “Goals vs. KPIs for more). After setting the vision, you should know which metric you are trying to improve on (i.e. sales, penetration, engagement, retention, etc.) An example of taking the vision and identifying the KPIs and goals would be: This year, we want to increase penetration in our existing markets by increasing our 10 priority markets to 10% penetration and our remaining markets increase by +2%.
See the difference? We have now added on to the vision with metrics so that we can measure our performance as we move throughout the year. Setting a numeric objective allows you to calculate your progress as well as monitor the changes each increase has on your overall business.
Step Three: Connect the Dots
CONNECT THE DOTS – In Step Three, now you are putting it all together to outline how you will achieve the vision and meet the KPIs and goals set. This is your opportunity to connect the dots between want and will. Think of this step as developing a football play or mapping out your journey from one destination to the next. What resources do you have that will help you achieve your goal? What resources are you currently lacking? What information do you need to learn? What platforms will help you reach your goal? To keep with the same example of increasing penetration in existing markets, a strategy could look similar to this:
Conduct a market assessment to determine volume of target market consumers within each area
Segment market areas into categories based on economic similarities
Create localized marketing to target priority markets
Send sales team into priority markets 3x weekly for cold calling and door to door efforts
Host monthly events in priority market areas and quarterly in other markets to generate greater brand awareness
Offer localized deals into all markets – one for priority areas (10-25% off) and one for other markets (5-10% off)
Following these 3 steps is a winning combination to setting your business up for success. If you need help, feel free to contact us at Creative License Business Consulting and we can help get you on the right track.