Welcome back to our blog here at FRF Consulting where we discuss anything and everything you need to know about starting a business, keeping it running, and allowing it to grow. And whether your goal is to eventually sell off the company to the highest bidder or stick with it as long as possible, you’re going to need a strategic plan. The purpose of a strategic plan is to help you define your company’s goals, mission, in addition to giving you the opportunity to assess competition and financial needs. Read on to learn about the five steps of a strategic plan.
Studying The Market
Every strategic plan starts with studying the market. You need to understand what’s in demand, what your competition looks like, and where you’ll fit in, in the grand scheme of things. This is one of the most important parts of the process because everything after it requires the knowledge you gained from this step.
SWOT Analysis
SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. In terms of strategic planning, strength would be anything that your business or business idea has over its competitor or something that puts it ahead in the market. Maybe your products offer a new solution that isn’t satisfied by a competitor’s product. Weaknesses are the opposite. They help you determine what area of your company could use improvement. Opportunities could also arise a year or two down the line which you’ll need to be prepared for and threats such as losing staff, a lack of cash flow, or limited resources.
Mission and Vision
Ideally, your mission statement should speak to your clients while your vision should speak to your company. For example, your mission statement could tell customers what need you will satisfy in the market while a vision what sales goal your company plans to meet within the next five years.
Define Department Goals
As a business owner, you need to understand and plan all aspects of your company, whether it’s the sales level of the company or the executive level. In addition to this, you should plan on setting goals for each level of the company so that they have a good starting place.
Create A Corporate Plan
Usually, the corporate plan is one of the last things you want to do because it requires knowledge of every department, their budgets, and their goals. The corporate plan takes into account every aspect of the business to form a “master plan” of sorts for use in staffing, budgeting, and financing.
Contact Our Business Consultants
When you’re looking to start your own business, it’s never easy to go at it alone. Even if you’ve started your own company before, there’s a lot you need to consider before you start selling a product or service. Here at FRF Consulting, we’ll work with you from the very beginning to help you form a valuable and effective strategic plan for your business. Call us today to get started.
