Roadmap to Strategic Planning: How to Accelerate Growth

Why Strategic Planning?

Many entrepreneurs reach a critical point when they recognize the need to accelerate growth by introducing formal business planning to take the company to the next level. Typically, entrepreneurial companies are heavily reliant on their founders as the face of the company for sales, management, and project implementations. With no time for planning, the company’s operations, sales, and leadership may not evolve fast enough.

Entrepreneurial companies look for the homerun. But what strategic planning offers is good, solid blocking and tackling, a roadmap to compete in a league with bigger players. Business growth is a choice and involves the discipline to evaluate where you are and plan for where you want to be.

Questions to Ask in Strategic Planning

• What is our mission, vision, and value proposition?
• What are our core products and services? Who are our customers?
• What do we know about our customer profile, customer needs, future needs?
• What are our external and internal strengths and weaknesses?
• Who are our competitors? What are their strengths and weaknesses?
• What opportunities and threats do we face?
• What do we know about the market - size and potential?

Steps for Strategic Planning

1. Evaluate the environment:

• SWOT Analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats)
• Competitive Analysis - Market Analysis - Customer Analysis

2. Create objectives for growth:

• 1-3 Year Strategic Objectives
• Tactical Plans - Milestones - Forecasts - Resources

3. Develop a sales plan:

• Tactics for new and existing accounts
• Tactics for building a sales organization with sales management 

4. Develop a plan for operations and building the organization: Organizational structure, roles, talent Procedures, processes, reporting, and accountability

EBI specializes in accelerating growth. Working closely with entrepreneurs, we’ve helped clients under 3 million achieve sales of over 20 million and position themselves for acquisition or next stage. EBI has had over 300 clients in major industries from Harvard Business School Executive Education to Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robbins.