Southeast Michigan
A major reason why small and medium sized businesses fail is lack of strategic planning. In fact, according to a 2018 survey by Constant Contact, 63% of small business owners surveyed said they only planned a year or less in advance.
Sound familiar? If so, that may be a sign your small business could benefit from strategic planning.
There are many reasons to make a strategic plan for your small business in Ann Arbor. Having a strategic plan that is shared internally and made available, in part or whole publicly, can educate your employees and customers, in addition to attracting potential investors or buyers, should you decide to sell your business. Most importantly, having a strategic plan benefits you!
Strategic planning for your Michigan small business can help clarify your goals. By carefully defining your vision, you will unite and focus your efforts on assessing where you are, where you want to be, and how to get there.
A useful acronym to keep in mind when strategic planning is SMARTER goals.
You may have heard of SMART goals before: it stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. Adding the ER to SMART brings in Evaluated and Reviewed. Big, abstract goals like “grow our business” are not very useful for strategic planning. Grow how much? By when? By what measure? A SMART goal might sound more like: “By end of year, we will increase marketing ROI by 10% by focusing on improved conversion rates on our online platforms.” This gives a very specific picture of what to improve, how, and by when. More importantly, it is also possible to measure success!
Every business is in a unique situation, and there isn’t just one way to put together a strategic plan. However, if you keep the following rules of thumb in mind, you can begin building a roadmap for where you want to be not just in a year, but 5, 10 or 20 years down the road!
Articulate Your Destination. Your strategic plan should include a clearly articulated summary of what your business stands for, and what it intends to achieve. Think of this as your “Vision and Mission.” This vision shouldn’t just be an exercise in branding, either. Make sure your employees are educated about your vision, and that they can communicate this vision & mission to others as well.
Define Your Goals. In addition to setting SMARTER goals, this may also be the right time to perform a SWOTT Analysis. SWOTT, or Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats, and Trends is generally considered to be the cornerstone of strategic analysis.
Your strengths and weaknesses are features of your organization, and your opportunities, threats and trends are features of the environment your organization is operating in. Features of your organization and environment have both the ability to further your goals (strengths and opportunities) or hinder them (weaknesses and threats). Very simply, identifying good and bad features, and whether they come from inside or outside your organization, is an elegant and powerful way to think strategically. SWOTT analysis can be scaled to fit any size of organization, too: from your small business in Ann Arbor, to the very largest international corporations.
Assess Your Situation. Knowing where you want to go isn’t any good if you don’t know where you’re starting from! In order to meaningfully work towards the goals you have set, you need a detailed picture of where you are. At this stage in strategic planning, you should think about what metrics and KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) make sense for you to track. Major KPI’s like total sales will always be relevant, of course. But there are many other underlying KPI’s, and KPI’s tied to digital marketing and sales, that may make sense to track. How does the total amount of visitors to your site lead to conversions? Are your contact forms generating leads? Are your leads being converted to sales and at what rate? These are all important things to think about when assessing your situation.
Create an Action Plan. Of course, creating a strategic plan is online the beginning. All of the industry research, KPI’s, and SWOTT analysis are useless if they don’t lead to change! In fact, some 90% of companies fail to properly execute their strategic plan! One major area many companies fail in is a resistance to reallocate resources according to their new strategic plan. Achieving your vision may very well mean shaking things up, restructuring teams, allocating more money to some departments, and less money to others. It’s not enough to desire change—you have to commit time and money to realizing the meaningful change your strategic plan demands! Interested in learning more about implementing meaningful change? I highly recommend giving this article a read!
Review and Adapt. The “final” step? You should revisit and revise your strategic plan often. Once a year should be considered a minimum, but in faster moving industries such as tech, consider reviewing it every quarter. Your strategic plan doesn’t do any good if once it’s made, it sits forgotten in your drawer. Involve your employees in the process and think of it as a living document.
Business Coaching for the Future
The good news: it’s never too late to begin your strategic planning journey.
Every business can benefit from strategic planning. Is your Michigan small business struggling? Are you part of the 63% that plans a year or less ahead? Do you have a strategic plan, but you’re struggling to implement it?
Feel like you need a hand?
David Waymann specializes in helping small and medium sized businesses in Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County, and all SE Michigan plan for the future. Contact David today to set up a strategy and review session!