Small Business Must-Haves: Strategic Planning

When working one-on-one with my personal business coaching clients, one of the primary areas we work on is putting them in the proper mindset of being a small business OWNER, not just a service provider. Often dentists and other healthcare providers tend to avoid the important responsibilities they must work tediously on which are business-related roles they must uphold in addition to the day to day roles of their profession.

One of the important areas of focus is that of strategic planning. Do you have a proper and effective strategic plan in place? Here are some tips I recommend to get yourself in appropriate alignment in your business:

  1. Know your business
  2. Determine your purpose for the plans: mission, vision, goals
  3. Create the Plan
    1. Mission statement
    2. 2 page Executive Summary
    3. Product or service offerings
    4. Target market
    5. Marketing Plan
    6. Industry and competitive analysis
    7. Pro-Forma Financials
    8. Resume’s of company principals
    9. Your offering (if seeking outside financial assistance or investors)
    10. Appendix (any pertinent information)

A Business Plan or Strategic Plan —-

  1. Needs to be driven by marketing needs and aims
  2. Marketing involves the strategic planning of a business through every aspect of customer engagement, including market research, product development, branding, advertising, promotion, methods of selling, customer service and extending to the acquisition or development of new businesses.
  3. Sales or selling is an activity within marketing, referring to the methods and processes of communicating and agreeing and completing the transaction (sale) with the customer.
  4. You will need a detailed plan on the following:
    1. Marketing
    2. Sales
    3. Financials

5. Business planning refers to the plan of the overall organization or to a unit or division within an organization with responsibility for trade of profit. Contains plans of various areas of the whole operation.

6. Business or marketing plans are built on cause and effect. “A Business Plan is the planned activities and aims of an entity, individual group or organization where effort is being converted into results”

7. Decide what crucial elements you are actually trying to achieve and always keep that in mind.

8. Mission: A strong, clear, ethical code that communicates your values to staff, customers, suppliers, and creates a simple consistent basis for operations.

9. ROI: All organizations need to be financially effective in what they do. Otherwise, they will cease to function.

Financial viability is necessary to sustain any organized activity.

Cause: input or action or resource

Effect: Outcome or result or consequence

These are just the first 9 steps of strategic planning. Take a deep breath! We’re not done yet! Next week we will discuss the SWOT analysis and a general overview of what your strategic plan needs to include. In the meantime, get started! Make progress! You can do this! And by doing this you will have a clearer path in which to move your business forward. Work smarter and you will get the results you desire.