Where's Your Roadmap to Achieving Your Business Goals?

Strategic business planning is a crucial process that enables organizations to set their long-term goals and develop a roadmap to achieve them. You will be analyzing your current business environment, identify your internal strengths and weaknesses, identify opportunities and threats, and choose strategies to maximize your business goals.? But it's more than planning.

Strategic planning requires focused and complete follow-up or you risk creating a dust-collecting paper weight in a nice binder.

Here are some key steps and a follow up/execution strategy for each step:

1. Vision and Mission: Clearly define the organization's purpose, values, and long-term aspirations. Follow up - use your values in every discussion your team has about your business.? Training, performance management, water cooler talk. Ask "are we living up to [core value] when we do that?"

2. Situation Analysis: Conduct a comprehensive SWOT assessment of your business. Follow up by creating a "Blue Ocean" marketing message and process to leverage your competitive advantages.?

3. Goal Setting: After creating SMART goals, create a weekly cadence of execution.? We use a "LION" format; Last week, Issues, Opportunities, Next week.? These cover all the bases to make sure your goals are progressing and hurdles are removed.??

4. Strategy Formulation: Niche down to the minimum viable audience for your products or services.? Determine that number by choosing a revenue target, then dividing your revenue by your average dollar sale.? That result is the number of deals you'll need for the year, which you can extrapolate into how many prospects you need using your 5-Ways numbers.

5. Implementation Planning: Implement a weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual operating rhythm to get your company into execution mode.? Follow up steps to ensure hurdles are removed and progress is taking place.??

6. Test and Measure: Regularly review and assess your implementation activities. Adjust as needed to address emerging opportunities or threats.

7. Communication and Alignment: Communicate until your eyes bleed, then communicate some more.? You'll know when you've communicated enough when people ask you to stop because they know exactly what to do.? As a rule of thumb, multiply the number of our employees by 17.? That result is the minimum number of times you'll have to repeat yourself until the message is clearly communicated.

8. Review and Adapt: Annually, review and update your plan unless there is a major market shift that threatens you.? Adapting to AI for example, is critical and it's moving faster than once a year can manage.? But not many other changes happen that quickly so beware changing your strategic plan just for change's sake.

Strategic business planning is an ongoing process that requires flexibility, adaptability, and a willingness to embrace change.

Remember, this is just a general overview of strategic business planning. If you need more specific information or have any further questions, please let me know.