This time of year, business leaders are starting to implement their strategy for 2020.
They know they can’t leave this implementation to chance. Their competitors will be doing the same and no doubt looking to take their market share!
Your strategy may be good but often it’s the implementation that is all wrong.
That’s because there is no clear communication between what the management board expects in terms of business results and the daily activities in the field.
Here are 5 keys to create a powerful business plan implementation.
- Customer Involvement. The critical person in the success of your plan is your customer. Have you discussed with them where you can add value? How can you best support their growth objectives next year? What existing or new service do they really need? Or more importantly, can you anticipate what they will need using your expertise to help them reach their objectives?
- A live working document. Most business plans even the good ones are not referred to or adjusted frequently enough. Often only being revisited annually or bi-annually with little impact on the day to day priorities. The formal business plan needs to be transferred to an abbreviated action plan format that is regularly referred to and tracked to monitor progress.
- Include Sales Objectives. If your business plan only outlines the business results desired, you need to add specific sales objectives that show ‘ how ‘ these results will be achieved. This is the critical link to ensure everyone implements the same sales strategy and not their own personal interpretation!
- Specific Sales Activities. The business plan does not include the specific sales activities that link directly to the achievement of the chosen sales objectives. These activities are vital to communicate to your sales team. So, they know precisely what they need to do on a daily basis to hit the objectives.
- Activity Based Sales Metrics. If you only review business results, sales, revenue, turnover or margin you are missing a trick! This type of business plan only measures business results. But that won’t tell you how you created those results. You must have metrics designed to measure your key sales activities. This will help you see how the results were achieved and give you valuable visibility, ensuring accountability and control over the strategy implementation.
Including these 5 elements will create a business plan that is focused on adding real value to the customer. Engages the sales team with a clear action plan and gives management visibility and control over how the results are being achieved month by month.
Now you have an implementation plan to delivery and exceed your 2020 goals!
If you would like to chat about creating this type of implementation drop me an email, this is a sharing platform where we are all learning and growing. peter.holland@linearstructure.com
