Vision to Action: Strategic Planning for Small Business Growth

Being a small business owner can be very stressful. Between sales, marketing, personnel, customer support, and day-to-day operations, there’s a lot to juggle. It can be hard to make time for strategic planning and to step back, assess progress, and set new goals. After all, when dealing with constant urgent tasks, it can be tempting to procrastinate on important but non-urgent business activities.

However, without proper planning, it can become hard to set priorities and to do what is truly necessary to make the business grow.

Strategic planning allows an organization to shift its focus from its current state to its desired future state, outlines steps to get there, and helps to prioritize efforts.

Strategic planning is an essential activity for any organization that wishes to improve its performance and achieve its goals. The best part is that it can be done in a simple and effective way, without a big budget, a staff of analysts, or a bloated document full of meaningless jargon. All that is needed for strategic planning is an honest assessment of the current situation and a list of concrete actions that will bring the organization closer to its goals.

Below are some steps that can help outline a strategic plan for a small business.

What Is Strategic Planning for Small Businesses?

Strategic planning is the process of determining where your business is, where you want to go, and what it will take to get there.

Strategic planning goes beyond just setting goals and writing a mission statement for your business. It ensures that you have a road map or plan that ties your goal and mission to what you’re going to have to do to make it happen.

Strategic planning can offer many advantages for your business, including:

• Getting a clear direction: Working out what you actually want to achieve and where you should be putting your time and effort.
• Making better decisions: Knowing when to take up opportunities that come your way and kicking the ones that don’t add up to your business goals.
• Using your resources a lot smarter: Spend your time, money, and manpower on activities that will actually pay off.
• Getting everyone on the same page: Helping your staff understand what the business is about and how their work is actually helping the business succeed.
• Holding people accountable: Setting out clear, measurable goals and keeping track of your progress.
• Being flexible: Being able to roll with the punches when the market changes or new opportunities pop up without losing sight of where you’re trying to go in the long run.

Strategic planning in a business is something that you do on an ongoing basis. As your business grows, the customers’ needs change, and challenges evolve, so the strategic planning process should be flexible to help the business move forward.

1. Define Your Mission and Vision

It’s essential to know why you’re doing what you’re doing before you select the course of action that will define your company in the years ahead. That’s where your strategy plan really comes alive.

Your company’s mission and vision are two sides of the same coin. They are closely related but have different purposes.

Your mission statement explains what your company does, the services you provide, and the people you serve. Your vision statement, in contrast, describes the big goals you want to accomplish in the future.

For example, here’s how a roofing company might write its mission and vision.

• Mission: To provide quality workmanship and reliable roofing services so homeowners can feel safe and secure in their own home.
• Vision: To become the most trusted and reliable roofing company in Massachusetts, known for our high-quality workmanship and exceptional customer service.

Feel free to adapt these statements to your business. They need to be clear but detailed enough to guide day-to-day operations and inspire staff and management alike.

If an opportunity comes your way, you can quickly decide if it is a good fit for your company by looking at how it aligns with your mission and vision.

2. Assess Where Your Business Stands Today

Now that you have identified the destination of a growing business venture, it is important to assess your current location.

To establish an efficient course of action and achieve the set goal, it is critical to evaluate the business’ current state and capabilities.

A SWOT analysis, which involves examining the business’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, is a useful way to scope the situation and plan the next steps.

Weaknesses and strengths are internal characteristics of the business and, therefore, are in the company’s power to change.

Questions to ask when identifying weaknesses and strengths include the following:

• What does the business do particularly well?
• What unique features does the business offer?
• What products and services earn the highest profits?
• Where does the business struggle?
• Does the business have the right people, equipment, and resources to be able to realize its full potential, or are there any shortcomings?
• Are there any process inefficiencies the business could benefit from eliminating?

Opportunities and threats, which are external to the business, involve the aspects the company cannot control.

Some examples of opportunities and threats are the following:

• Are there any changing trends the business could take advantage of or suffer from?
• Can the business expand its product offerings or explore new markets?
• Will competitors introduce new features or invest heavily in the market?
• What political, technological, or economic developments could negatively impact the business?
• Are there any possible alliances or acquisitions the company should consider pursuing?

By looking at the financial records of the business in conjunction with the SWOT analysis, sales analysis, and customer satisfaction examination, it will be possible to make an objective evaluation of the business and plan the next step accordingly.

3. Set Clear, Measurable Goals

With a general understanding of your current position, it’s time to set the goals that will guide your actions.

The goals that relate to business planning are usually broad, such as improving the general situation of the company or increasing revenue. Yet, having a general idea of what one hopes to achieve is rarely enough to create an efficient plan.

That is why it is essential to set SMART goals.

• Specific: The goal should have a particular focus.
• Measurable: It should be possible to quantify the results.
• Achievable: The goal should be realistically reachable.
• Relevant: The goal should align with the company’s values and objectives.
• Time-bound: There should be a deadline for achieving the goal.

For instance, instead of stating that one wants to improve sales, one can create a goal that would be more structured and set the specific focus on the problem. The company could set the goal “to increase the annual sales by 15% without decreasing the amount of profit per product” with “within the next 12 months” as a deadline.

One should create goals that would help answer the question “What do I want to accomplish?” and then identify the key performance indicators. Goals should be specific and indicate the desired outcome.

The primary objectives should be set in accordance with the company’s priorities. For example, the company may set the goals related to increasing the profit and revenues, improving the marketing strategy, enhancing operational processes, becoming more competitive, and being more productive and profitable.

It is not possible to set goals in all areas; thus, a small business should prioritize quantity over quality and set no more than 3-5 objectives.

4. Identify Key Strategies

Goals give you a clear idea of what you want to achieve. Strategies tell you how you’re going to get there.

Having a goal is only part of the process, because setting a goal doesn’t automatically create a path to achieving it.

Let me give you an example. Suppose you want to increase your revenue by 15% in the next 12 months. You might need to adopt several strategies to hit that target:

• Expand your customer base: Get into new markets or establish relationships with new customers in existing ones;
• Enhance the lifetime value of a customer: Encourage repeat purchases or develop more relationships with one’s existing customers;
• Increase sales effectiveness: Optimize the selling process to enhance conversion rates;
• Diversify services: if applicable, determine if there is room to grow by providing additional services to one’s existing customer base;
• Reduce costs: where possible, optimize operations to eliminate wasteful expenditures while enhancing the capacity.

You don’t need to try and implement every single possible strategy either. Pick the ones that are going to have the biggest impact and that fit with what you’ve got to work with.

It’s also important to be able to distinguish between things that need to be sorted out right now and things that are truly important to the long-term success of your business.

You can’t escape the fact that some days you’ll be dealing with crisis after crisis. But if you focus only on the immediate issues, you won’t make any progress on your bigger goals.

A solid strategic plan helps you stay focused on what’s really important, allowing you to balance the day-to-day demands of running a business with the work required to help make it grow.

5. Create a 90-Day Action Plan

Now it’s time to get tactical. Your action plan itemizes all of your strategies into tasks, includes deadlines, and holds everyone accountable. We recommend that you develop an action plan around 90-day increments. This can give you a realistic opportunity to accomplish your objectives.

In your overall marketing plan, if one of your strategies is to improve your website, here’s how you might itemize it:

• Audit your website to identify areas of improvement (Weeks 1-2)
• Revise your main service pages and calls to action (Weeks 3 – 4)
• Develop content for your ideal customers (Weeks 5 – 6)
• Improve local search and directory presence (Weeks 7 – 8)
• Implement lead tracking and analyze results (Weeks 9 – 10)
• Review results and next 90-day priorities (Weeks 11 – 12)

Small steps can help you go far. An action plan helps you stay on track and avoids getting sidetracked by some new fad.

Each task should have an owner, a due date, and a deliverable.

Smaller, more attainable milestones within your action plan will help your staff or vendor maintain their focus, productivity, and momentum.

6. Assign Responsibility and Keep Your Team Aligned

Even the best strategic plans can fail due to lack of responsibility. It is crucial to identify who will be held accountable for putting that plan into action.

That could be anyone, not just one person, but someone who makes sure everyone else does their part.

For small business owners, handing off this task to someone is a great way to give them a chance to grow some real management skills and show that you have faith in them to get things done.

The same principle applies to delegating other duties. You can’t do everything by yourself. It is also important to have an open line of communication.

Employees also need to understand the business owner’s perspective, the final goal, and how their work contributes to reaching it.

That way, there could be no misunderstandings or misinterpretations, and everyone works towards one common goal. All those facts contribute to building the image of the business owner in the eyes of the public.

7. Measure Progress and Adjust Your Plan

Strategic planning is not a one-time event that happens once a year. Your plan should be a living document that guides your decision-making and helps you measure and evaluate your progress throughout the year.

Set key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure your progress toward your goals. What KPIs you choose to track will depend on your objectives but may include:

• Revenues and margins
• Sales closing rates and qualified leads
• Customer retention & satisfaction
• Employee retention & productivity
• Cost savings and efficiencies
• Progress on major milestones

Determine when your strategic plan will be reviewed and evaluated.

Monthly reviews can help you stay on track to meet your goals and identify any roadblocks that may have come up so you can make adjustments to your implementation plan.

A quarterly review of your plan can also help you see how well your strategy is working, what to double down on, and what to change.

Use this time to ask yourself:

• Are we on track to meet our goals?
• Were any of our strategies more effective than others?
• What barriers have slowed us down?
• Are we using our time and resources wisely?
• Have our market conditions or business priorities changed?
• What should we stop, start, or continue doing?

Remember that strategic planning is designed to give you direction, but you should not be married to your plan. If things change or you learn new information, you may need to pivot.

8. Keep Your Strategic Plan Simple and Flexible

One of the biggest mistakes that small businesses make is thinking that strategic planning has to be complicated. There is no need for a drawn-out plan with lots of projections and fancy-sounding babble; in fact, it could hurt your business.

Your strategic plan should be no more than a few pages, maybe even just one or two, and should instead focus on simply guiding your business in the right direction.

Your strategic plan at a minimum should include things such as:

• Your mission/vision
• Your current standing in the business world
• 3-5 strategic goals
• Strategies that you intend to use to meet those goals
• Your immediate action items,
• Who is responsible for what
• How you will know when you have succeeded.

While it is good to have a solid plan, it is also important to remember that the point of creating a strategic plan is to have something that makes creating and maintaining your business’s success easier, rather than something that dictates every little thing your business does.

Strategic planning should not be about dictating what will happen to your business, but rather about preparing your business for the road ahead.

Move From Planning to Purposeful Growth

Growth in small business does not occur by accident. To grow your business, you need to prioritize, make smart decisions, and execute with consistency.

A strategic planning session allows you to step back from the day-to-day and take a close look at your situation and decide where and how you want to move forward.

That could mean taking on a new opportunity or client, defining a direction that makes sense for your business, or prioritizing what you should do first to make the most impact.

The most important thing about strategic planning is that it provides focus and the follow-through needed to make it happen.

At Mosaic Business Advisors, we know that planning for growth in your small business can be challenging, especially with all your other responsibilities. We can help you focus on the opportunities that will move your business forward.

Are you are ready to make a strategic shift in your small business? Contact Mosaic Business Advisors to talk about how we can help you strategically grow your business.