As we move further into the 21st Century, business owners have had to deal with an ever-changing economic climate that brought a barrage of new challenges with increasing sales. As a result, they have had to focus more intensively on strategic planning.  

 

This is the aspect of management that allows you to develop a strategy that addresses all probable contingencies. More importantly, this determines the best course of action to reach your goals, overcome obstacles and maintain a competitive edge regardless of the current economic state that will help sell more products for your business.  

 

SIX-STAGE PROCESS TO CREATE A PLAN  

 

Planning has taken on a life of its own over the last few years. The point that most people miss is that you don’t need a Harvard business degree to create a solid and effective strategic plan that will help increase your business sales. You can put one together using a simple six-stage process:  

You should examine your business' history to gain insight into how you arrived at your present position. Take a look at why and how your company was started, analyze the changing revenue and profit stream over time, and look at the original mission of your business. Most importantly, pay close attention to past changes in your profitability and stimulus for these changes.  

 

Try to objectively determine the impact that leadership has had on the direction that the business has gone throughout the years. This can be difficult to accomplish if you have been the leader for the majority of your business' existence, so an outside party may have to be called in to facilitate the process.  

 

Once you’ve gained an understanding of the past, you can study the present situation of your business such as the vision, mission, values, goal fulfillment, positioning in the marketplace and regulatory compliance. Investigate the track record for personnel development to determine whether or not management has influenced employees to reflect a positive and thriving business atmosphere – promotions, longevity and loyalty for example.  

 

Only after you take a look at where your business has been and is now can you move on to the exciting exercise of deciding where you want to go.  

 

This stage is the most profound of strategic planning. You need to create a concise vision in order to start designing the future of your business. Develop goals for future revenue, profit, quality and time. Determine future capital, facilities and equipment needs.  

 

Of equal importance is the projections for future target markets that you need to create. Only when you have gained a good grasp of these trends will you be able to place your business in an excellent position to plan for tomorrow.  

 

Develop Your Strategies

In order to complete your plan, you need develop your strategies so you know how to get to where you want to go. It is crucial that you prepare from the ground up with key people in your business – have them include one year projections. Be sure to assign due dates for accomplishing your set goals and develop a chart to track your progress as this provides visibility to other employees so that every person is on the same page.            

 

Initiate a System

Create a system of accountability to maintain everyone’s involvement in the implementation of the strategic plan. Not only will this allow everyone to feel part of the team, but it will precisely outline who is in charge of which responsibilities and functions. It’s important to establish review periods regularly and use a goals and controls system inside your monthly management committee.  

 

In order to keep goals and deadline on track, use a team consulting technique for positive progress. This will avoid any problems that you may have if one person may have trouble accomplishing his or her task, and stop you from missing critical goals and action plans. Remember that a chain is as strong as the weakest link.  

 

The best of this combined thinking results in the finished strategic plan that will help others to understand the business goals. This can be used later as a standard for reviewing performance, serve as an important control element and a catalyst for thinking towards the future.