Optimizing Business Strategy

All businesses, regardless of size, should go through an annual planning process to establish their business strategy for the New Year. Some businesses have a regimented and/or structured process, others don’t. Too many businesses rely too heavily on past performance to set future strategy. To optimize their strategy we ask Executives the following question:

Based upon the talent of the people in your organization, the products/services that you offer and the market place potential…how much revenue do you deserve?

This question establishes a very different dialog than looking at historical numbers to set revenue goals. The fact remains… it takes the same amount of time to build a $5 million dollar strategy as it does to build a $500 million dollar strategy.

The most successful companies use their business planning process to identify two or three mission-critical initiatives for the coming year. In addition to the initiatives they create a consensus action plan complete with dates, owners and time lines to support them.

The main objective of the business planning process is to develop, through a group process, a business strategy for the coming year (or multiple years) along with the supporting initiatives in order to deliver results, accelerate revenue performance and gain market share.

The elements of a successful business strategy include:

Executive Summary - a business overview, a review of the previous year’s performance, industry and market trends, success metrics, a competitive analysis and the documenting of big wins and big losses
Financial Review - a year-over-year comparison, actual versus goal comparisons, a sales-to-revenue ratio, a review of sales and revenue performances by business unit or segment, a review of SGA costs, a review of targeted account performance and the creation of a business success formula
High-Level Outline - your marketing strategy, including new product development pipeline, direct mail campaigns, advertising, trade shows, promotions and your pricing strategy
Strategic Business Plan - for the upcoming year that includes sales and revenue goals by business unit or segment, identifies potential acquisition targets, outlines contingency plans, sales and revenue projections and key objectives and priorities by quarter

Testimonial

Without exception, all 100 attendees were extremely positive about your presentation. Specifically, they commented that the business strategy tools and concepts that you introduced were thought-provoking, relevant to their issues and useful going forward. Additionally, they were all pleasantly surprised that you were able to make the presentation content pertinent to the healthcare industry. In fact, several thought you must have worked in our profession previously!”

Bill Gracey; COO; LifePoint Hospitals