Tag Archives: strategic planning

Strategic Planning, Small Business Planner-Style!

Strategy, , , ,

We’re six weeks into 2020 and everyone is doing strategic planning for their small business! Which is a great thing…because, as we all known, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail…but as we were preparing to do this year’s strategic planning for Small Business Solver, we noticed that there were no good resources or tools out there to help small business owners through this process.

White 3D figure with a black necktie examines the word "Plan" in large, red, 3D block letters with a magnifying glass. Keyword: strategic planning
Time for Strategic Planning!

So we created a strategic planning process of our own! We used it to do our own planning, and have since used it with 50 small businesses, non-profits, and large associations! We’ve been so excited by the results that we’ve made it a training module on the Small Business Solver Website! It was also the subject of a recent webinar:

In this webinar, you’ll learn about:

  1. The importance of defining your vision
  2. What makes an effective mission statement
  3. How to do a SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, Weaknesses) Analysis
  4. SMART goals
  5. Strategic Activities and getting them done with a Workplan

Defining Your Vision

Your vision tells you and the people involved with your business where your business is headed – it is your Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal! For strategic planning purposes, this goal is set for 5 years, although you’ll define goals for the 1, 3, and 5 year marks. Keep your mind open, because you’ll be setting Impossible Goals as well as Possible Goals! (As the webinar explains…)

An Effective Mission Statement

You’ll want to write a strong mission statement as part of your strategic planning. The webinar gives you a formula for writing a mission statement that is:

  1. Memorable
  2. Personal and inclusive
  3. A description of your daily activities
  4. Focused on your target market
  5. A description of the ideal result of your actions for your target market.

Your mission statement should motivate you and your staff!

Strategic Planning and SWOT!

A SWOT analysis forces you to take both internal and external inventory of factors that will affect the success of your business:

  1. Strengths – What do you have going for you?
  2. Weaknesses – What perceived gaps are holding you back?
  3. Opportunities – What are the possibilities or opportunities you can leverage
  4. Threats – What do you need to watch out for?

Your strategic planning will be much more effective when you have a clear idea of what you have to work with!

Strategic Planning Includes Strategic Goals

At this stage of strategic planning, you must define 3 – 5 critical areas for your business that are related to your Unique Selling Proposition. You’ll learn in the webinar that most small businesses list Revenue and Communications or Marketing as critical areas, and you’ll also see examples of other areas. Once you’ve defined your ctitical areas, you’ll write a strategic goal for each of them.

Your strategic plan really starts to take form once you’ve set these goals.

Strategic Activities and Workplan

You now need to list the activities required to make your strategic goals a reality create a workplan so that the work gets done! Ask yourself:

  1. What tasks need to be done so that the goals you’ve set are achieved?
  2. In what order should these tasks be done?
  3. Who is responsible for each task?
  4. What is the deadline for each task?

Keep your workplan and the strategic tasks in view so that they stay on the radar of everyone involved! See the webinar for some suggestions on how to do this.

Strategic Planning – Bottom Line!

Strategic planning lets you take a large amount of data about your business and the areas within it and reduce the overwhelm around what to do next. You’ll end the process with a manageable number of goal, a plan for getting them done, and (hopefully!) a commitment to repeat the process the next year!

Check out the webinar…and then check out our new Strategic Planning Training Module and get your strategic planning done for 2020! And be sure to let us know what you think (here, or on Facebook, or on Twitter, or by email at sarah@smallbusinesssolver.com)…because we love to hear from you!

Guaranteed Better Than The Rest

Established & Growing Businesses, Management & Human Relations, Strategy, , , , ,

Differentiating your small business and continuing to improve your business are two key pieces of being better than the rest.

But how do you get this in motion? Where do you start?

In 15 minutes we walk through two key objectives;
1. Ensuring that you are making time to work on your business rather than in it
2. Outlining 5 key ways to differentiate your business and how to do this

Contact the Expert

Eloise Pasianotto
www.effectiveprofessionalconsulting.com

Small Business Growth Strategies

Established & Growing Businesses, Innovation & Creativity, Strategy, , , , ,

growthstrategiesGrowing your business is something that most entrepreneurs strive to do. They want to grow their business to help increase their profit, grow the value of their business to sell it at a later date, they want to hire more people, they want to help the community, they want to build something for their family, they are competitive, they never quit, and there are many other personal reasons.
 
Regardless, most small business owners are looking for ways to grow. The two that often come to mind is to grow outside of your geographical location and expand the size of the market or to create a new product. But there are a ton of other strategies to growing a business and many examples to follow. Click on the image to see them.
 
Watch this 30 minute video to find out;
 
– 12 small business growth strategies
– examples of businesses that used these strategies and how it worked for them
– draw out key takeways and ideas to use for each strategy
 

 
Expert’s Contact Information
 
Carla Langhorst
Small Business Consultant
Carla@smallbusinesssolver.com

Make Your Home Business Fly

Management & Human Relations, Operations & Efficiency, Start Ups, Strategy, , , ,

Need some tools make your home business fly? This 30 minute video outlines some excellent tools that you will be able to use and incorporate immediately to:

– Set goals that you are more inclined to stick to
– Gain a better perspective on your time
– Learn how to evaluate and course-correct as needed
– Work on your business, not just in your business
– Rediscover the importance and power of communication

Above all, Sheri will inspire you to become even more committed to yourself and your work, reminding you of the value of ongoing study, learning, and dedication of time and patience necessary to bring about the meaningful success you desire.

Follow Sheri on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and her blog at www.ICPublishing.ca .

Copyright 2013

Strategic Planning 2013

Established & Growing Businesses, Management & Human Relations, Operations & Efficiency, Strategy, ,

This is the best time to sit down and iron out your strategic plan for 2013. But where to start?

This 20 minute video outlines how to create a vision, how to break it down into actionable tasks, and how to keep on moving forward.

Watching this video is a strategic thing to do!  Want to get started yourself, download your own Strategic Planner 2013.

 

Preparing For Change: Career (And Personal) Transition

Management & Human Relations, Start Ups, Strategy, , , ,

Starting & running a business can be extremely stressful on a physical, mental, and emotional front. Get advice from a career coach and life coach on how to make this transition successfully.

 

Our subject matter expert is Andrea Bonsey, a Career Counsellor and Counselling Therapist at Navigation Counselling Inc.

 

Reach her at www.navigationcounselling.ca or andrea@navigationcounselling.ca

 

Scaling A Small Business

Established & Growing Businesses, Management & Human Relations, Operations & Efficiency, Start Ups, Strategy, , ,

There are 5 major phases of the enterprise lifecycle from a small business in rapid growth to a mature corporate enterprise. What is important at each stage and how to accomplish this as you grow?

 

The subject matter expert is Adrian Davis, CEO of Whetstone Inc. (www.whetstoneinc.ca) is a professional speaker and technology advisor.

 

Manage Your Energy & Your Choices (Be a Better Self-Manager)

Management & Human Relations, Operations & Efficiency, Strategy, , ,

Now there’s a thought?! As you plan your day and week, try evaluating the options and choices you have, and take into consideration the energy you need/want for each task.

We all know what it feels like to be stressed about “time”. You know, too many things to do and not enough time to do them in. If this sounds like you right now, you might be trying too hard to micro-manage every hour, often overfilling your schedule. This is a sure-fire way to set yourself up for frustration and disappointment, versus success.

Managing your choices and assessing wisely the energy and focus you need is a much more realistic and useful approach. You will be more inclined to have a better perspective on how much time you will really need to allot for each appointment or “to do” item on your list.  You will also quickly see the value of creating a cushion over the course of your day, to allow for the meeting that runs a little later or the road repairs that tie up traffic unexpectedly right in the middle of your day.

More positives:

•  The breathing space in your day will help you think more clearly, and recognize opportunities that you might have otherwise missed (being distracted by all that you still had to do).

•  Remaining in the moment will show more respect to others you are engaging with, and definitely give you more joy and respect in return too.

There are still a couple of other significant challenges people can face. Have you ever added tasks to your day just randomly (in reaction mode) without checking and prioritizing with your existing commitments? Or perhaps you added ones that shouldn’t have been there to begin with (i.e. those tasks belonged on someone else’s list)? I’m not saying that these things should never happen; there’s just a lot of wisdom in doing so with more thought than is often given.

To help you get a better sense of where your time is going and provide you a quick and easy way to see where you can tweak things, I encourage you to do what I call a Wellness Journal for one week.

 

From my book, Working From Home & Making It Work©

I initially created the Wellness Journal to help my clients and colleagues get a handle on their use of time—or as often was the case—get a handle on how and who else was using or consuming their time. As with many other tools I have developed or passed on from my mentors, the Wellness Journal has become an amazing exercise that I utilize regularly.

 

It’s very simple, and you can customize it the way you see fit for your particular circumstances. Detail is helpful, but not to the point where it will inhibit you from following through with the process.

 

Every one of us has 168 hours in our week, that’s 7 days times 24 hours.

 

I encourage you to pick a relatively normal week you can commit to—and write, type or record in some way, all that makes up your day. Note everything you do for yourself, for your friends, family, work, etc.

 

Quite likely, well before the week is up, you will see some areas that you can make adjustments in, to help things run more efficiently and productively.

Here’s to your success!

 

_______

 

 

This week’s guest blog is by Sheri Andrunyk, on Managing Your Energy & Your Choices, more insights of which you’ll find in her new book, Working from Home and Making it Work.

 

Sheri Andrunyk is Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Inspiring Speaker, Holistic Business and Life Coach, Author and Publisher. Her specialty is working with small business owners and entrepreneurs.

 

 

She has a passion for all forms of meaningful communication, and has expertise in providing invaluable guidance to her clients, colleagues, and community.

 

Sheri’s new book Working from Home and Making it Work discusses time and choice management, work/life balance and shares powerful insights on how we can become better self-managers, an essential component to success.

 

 

 

For more information and to download a free chapter, please visit

 

www.insightfulcommunications.ca

 

Build A One Page Business Plan That Pops!

Finance & Accounting, Innovation & Creativity, Management & Human Relations, Marketing & Branding, Sales & Business Development, Start Ups, Strategy, ,

A one-page business plan can be great if you are using the business plan more of an action plan for yourself, your partner, and your company. It makes it easy to update, keeps the attention of the reader, and is to the point.

Another way to use a one-page business plan is to use it to generate interest from customers, potential partners/employees, suppliers, and initial interest from financial companies.

The video is a quick overview of the main components of the one-pager & then how to make the one-pager a little bit different (add POP!)