Growth planning will allow you to put your limited resources where they are going to be the most useful, and open the doors for objectivity - Objectivity in reporting, decision-making, and financial health.
Before you invest in another marketing campaign or hire a new sales person, spend some time walking through your overarching plan, so you're not throwing away precious resources and time.
Why develop a growth plan:
Your Business Growth Plan may bruise some egos, because it brings everything into question. So, before engaging in this kind of behavior, it's good to understand its purpose and how it can and should be applied to your business.
1. Egos don't pay the bills - unfortunately... otherwise your salespeople could keep the lights on just by being there and breathing your air day in and day out.
2. Sales and Marketing are on the same team, but aren't acting like it - This means they are out of alignment, and there is no way you can build an empire without alignment
3. You're not growing as fast as you'd like or had hoped - and you can't seem to pinpoint any bottle-neck sjamming up your entire system... even though you know they exist.
4. The competition is getting way too crowded - and you're concerned about staying relevant
5. Your business goals and financial goals don't seem to be helping each other
What it comes down to is whether you're trying to grow the business, by how much, and at one point in time you want to hit your goals.
What you can find in a basic growth plan:
Your growth plan should be comprehensive enough to articulate the different aspects of the business that will be engaged and impacted by the changes, but not so much to get muddled in the day-to-day details.
A solid growth plan should include:
- Your business goals (including financial)
- Your existing strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities
- Big picture strategies for overcoming your major challenges
- Ways to measure success
- The ability to read data and pivot as necessary
- A sales-centric mindset (how is this going to increase sales?)
You will have to get significantly more detailed as you go, but chances are that at this stage, you are out of touch with the real problems ravaging your bottom line, and it's probably happening because you haven't executed step 1 of your growth plan yet - Diagnostics & Alignment (read more about that here) - the part of the planning process that involves setting up data gathering tools, gathering said data, then analyzing results.
How to get started with YOUR growth planning:
Talking about growth planning is one thing - getting something tangible off the ground is something else entirely. But where do you start? How do you know what the best foot forward is, and is there a way to guarantee success?
To answer these demands, we built an interactive tool that won't pull any punches when identifying where your strengths and opportunities exist, and it will provide you with a linear path for developing and kicking off your growth planning!
To get started, click HERE:
The 5 steps in the above-referenced DIY builder are:
- Share a little about you
- Share a little about your company
- Describe your goals
- Describe your plans
- Describe your known challenges
The calculator will do the rest!
Not sure if you're in planning mode yet? Try this Guide to Getting Started with Growth Planning instead!
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