Strategic Planning
When successful small business owners hear the words strategic plan, it almost always invokes a fear response, or at the least, some natural hesitation. Part of this is due to the old adage, “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” You know the ins and outs of your industry, you’ve honed your craft to perfection (or close to it), and if we’re being honest with ourselves, having to make decisions that force us to confront the future and potentially calculate wrong, is kind of scary.
It's likely that you created a long-term business plan before you started your company. Maybe you even created a strategic plan along with your business plan, mission statement, and short to mid-term goals. Another common possibility with successful small business owners is this: Maybe you were so skilled at the services you offer; you were able to build a network of clients based on your talent and word of mouth leaving any in-depth planning as an afterthought if you had time to think about it at all. No matter what the case, you were able to scale your business to the level it is now, and that’s great!
As your business has grown, you have become a leader with several employees, and with that change, your role and responsibilities have likely grown with it. You’re no longer utilizing the same skills and craft knowledge that brought you so much early success, on a day-to-day basis. This is not comfortable for most people and we tend to fall back upon the familiar. Your revenue is steady or slowly increasing but you feel like you have run into a plateau. As the astute professional that you are, you realize that your plan, tactics, and goals must evolve to meet the ever-changing dynamics of your company.
Change is an inevitability; we all know this. You also know that to break out of this plateau and continue to scale at a steady clip, something must change in the way your business operates. Many try and adapt to this realization by working harder, pushing their employees to fill multiple roles that they may not be suited for, or worse, cost-cutting in other crucial areas.
Unfortunately, working harder only gets us so far and unnecessary cost-cutting can eat away at the trust you have built with your clients. That’s not to say that cost-cutting is bad; we will likely find several areas where you can cut-cost and boost revenue while still providing the service you’re known for, with a happy, highly efficient team. However, to do this effectively, we need to reevaluate where you are at and where you want to go.
Utilizing our six-step process, The Strategic Perspective will work with you hand in hand. We draw upon our expertise and outside perspective, along with your company and industry knowledge to create an actionable, quantifiable plan that works for you, taking your business to the next level. Just as you are an expert in your field, we are experts in ours. Our mission is your success and naturally, your success is our success!