Businesses don’t build themselves. Business growth requires hard work, dedication, and, most importantly, planning!
A business plan is a roadmap that outlines your company’s goals, objectives, strategies, and tactics for achieving success. A well-crafted business plan helps improve your team, time management, profits and systems, ultimately leading to growth.
Can you believe that 65 percent of small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) still don’t have a business plan or financial forecasts in place? Those with a plan often make the mistake of creating it and never referring back to it again.
The secret to a successful business plan is regularly reviewing and refining it. This is why I implement a group business planning day with my clients every 90 days.
The 90-day timeframe aligns well with the traditional quarterly financial reporting cycle, but more importantly, it supercharges flexibility, realistic goal-setting, accountability, momentum, and evaluation.
Using a 90-day planning cycle, you can stay agile, focused, and effective in achieving your goals. It’s a win, win situation.
Let me talk you through the four main reasons a 90-Day business planning cycle is the key to success:
Realistic Goal-Setting
The very first step to effective business planning is setting S.M.A.R.T. goals.
S.M.A.R.T. goals are a framework for setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound objectives. The acronym S.M.A.R.T stands for:
S – Specific: Goals should be clear, concise, and focused on a particular outcome or result.
M – Measurable: Goals should be quantifiable and measurable to track and evaluate progress.
A – Achievable: Goals should be realistic and attainable based on your resources, skills, and capabilities.
R – Relevant: Goals should be aligned with your overall vision, mission, culture and values.
T – Time-bound: Goals should have a specific timeframe or deadline for completion.
Setting S.M.A.R.T. goals allows you to create a roadmap for success, track progress, and evaluate performance.
In my 90 Days business planning day, we review your goals, celebrate achievements, measure what’s worked and not worked, and create actionable and realistic goals for the next 90 days.
You know how the saying goes, “A plan without action is just a wish!”
Accountability
When held accountable for your goals, you’re more likely to focus on achieving them. Accountability creates a sense of urgency and ownership of tasks and responsibilities.
Furthermore, accountability and support foster transparency and communication within a team or organisation. When you’re accountable for your tasks, progress can be easily tracked, and everyone is aware of what is expected of them. This helps create a positive and collaborative work environment conducive to achieving your goals.
Building Momentum
Prioritising client work over your vision and neglecting your business plan are easy traps to fall into.
However, when you break down larger goals into smaller, more manageable tasks that can be completed within a 90-day period, it’s easier to build momentum and maintain a sense of progress. Baby steps are all-important! Your business planning needs to be activity-driven, not just results-driven.
When you and your team see progress towards your goals, it creates a sense of accomplishment and drives further momentum. Momentum also helps build confidence and resilience. These are essential qualities for achieving long-term success.
Evaluation
Philip Chantry, Business Coach
Evaluation encourages you to learn from your mistakes and celebrate your successes.
When you test and measure your performance, you can identify what worked and what didn’t, and you can then apply those insights to future planning. This leads to continuous improvement and better decision-making.
Evaluation also helps you stay accountable and transparent with stakeholders such as investors, customers, and employees. When business owners are transparent about their performance and progress, it creates trust and confidence among stakeholders, leading to increased support and loyalty.
Evaluation also helps you stay competitive and adapt to changes in the market and industry. You can identify emerging trends and opportunities by evaluating your performance and progress and adjusting your strategies and tactics accordingly. This helps you stay ahead of the curve and remain relevant in your industry.
To summarise, the key ingredient to successful business planning is a 90-day review cycle, as it creates a framework for realistic goal-setting, accountability, momentum and evaluation.
If you need more continuity and clarity with your business plan, join us for our next quarterly GrowthClub, a 90-Day business planning day, on Friday, the 16th of June, 2023.
You’ll walk away from the day feeling energised with a vision, focus and goals set for the next three months.
