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Strategic Planning to Reach Your Goals

Submitted by Mitch Seigel on Tues, 6/26/2012

How often have you heard the saying, “If you fail to plan, plan to fail?” Probably so often it falls on deft ears. Over the past four years I have called on literally hundreds of businesses as potential prospects for my consulting practice. Unfortunately for many of these businesses, I’m calling on them too late in the game.

Either they have been in business for years and they have been going about it day to day, week to week, month to month, or, they are a start up, and are about to fall into the same trap. No plan, no direction, and limited results.

A plan starts with the company goals in mind. If you don’t have any goals, develop them from looking at the competition in your industry. What do they do in a year, in five years, etc. Then back it out to determine what your business should be doing on a yearly basis. How will you get to that level? There must be action items, with people within your organization who will be held accountable for making those action steps become reality.

I talked with a restaurant yesterday who thought that spending $2,000 a month on radio advertising was, to use her words, “way out of my league.” I asked her what the expected gross sales of the restaurant was fort the year and she couldn’t give me an answer. 3-7% is an industry average for marketing budgets. If she knew what her expected gross sales were for the business, she would also know that $2,000 per month was way below a 3-7% advertising expenditure.

Yes, planning takes time, but in the end it is well worth the investment. There are many resources to assist in developing a plan, up to and including utilizing objective points of view from outside consultants. Don’t hurt your business potential by failing to plan. Plan on planning for the rest of the existence of your business, and you will be either back on track toward your goals, or developing a fantastic beginning to your newly started business.

What are your challenges when it comes to Strategic Planning? I look forward to hearing your comments. Until next time…