SavvyprobookkeepHaving business goals and objectives is essential to achieving consistent results and, last but not least, staying motivated. When it comes to goals, strategic planning has everything to do with it, after all, you can’t set an objective without knowing how it will be achieved, right?
It is no coincidence that points to the lack of planning as one of the most frequent causes of death in companies. The early mortality of enterprises is related to a business culture that is still very much linked to improvisation.
“Positive thinking” is still the crutch that many managers end up clinging to, in the absence of a tangible goal and a plan that can achieve it.
When designing a strategy, every company must set the desired objectives and what actions are necessary to achieve them, answering at least three simple questions: what, how and for whom. In other words, what the company does, considering products and services, how it performs (quality process, brand, varieties of services/products, additional services and price), and which niche (market) it will work for.
To overcome the habit of not planning, we now highlight what you need to put into practice, how to put aside the fear of numbers and the tools available, all of them free. Save it to your favorites and consult it whenever you need!
Get rid of vague ideas
If you find yourself unmotivated to continue running your business, you may have difficulty determining a reference that will guide you on your journey. The lack of motivation, in most cases, is linked to poor management development in general.
In addition to the culture of improvisation, Entrepreneurs are also used to being the “jack of all trades”, due to the cost of labor, taxes, low qualifications and other obstacles. Involved in several problems, he ends up dedicating little or no time to setting goals that are real, that is, quantifiable in the form of numbers.
Therefore, the first measure to be taken is to set a goal following the SMART management tool. This is the acronym for:
- specific — specific: the manager or leader must be direct. In other words, the goal will be to increase sales by 20% in 6 months;
- measurable — measurable: determination of an indicator. In other words, increased revenue in 6 months;
- attainable — attainable: the goal must be defined in a possible reality;
- realistic — realistic: must consider the reality of the company, making the company evolve and grow;
- time-bound — temporizable: determination of an objective deadline for achieving the goal.
Can you see now where you might be failing? It would be great to achieve the goal of selling more, however, if this rosy dream cannot be measured, it will amount to nothing. At the same time, it needs to be based on realistic estimates that can be met within a deadline, with monitoring based on metrics.
Here’s a tip: while not having goals and their measurement is very negative for the company, excessive measurement and control is also very bad.
Therefore, the ideal is balance. You must measure what contributes to the evolution of the company’s results and to improving management for decision making, otherwise the business will become rigid and unproductive.
Form the action plan
Once the goal has been stipulated within what the SMART tool proposes, it is time to move on to the second stage: operationalization. Until now, your goal only exists on paper, meaning you still don’t know exactly what to do to make it happen.
Let’s imagine that your vague project to sell more was translated into a concrete goal of increasing profit by 10%. It may seem unambitious, but in a country where reducing debt is considered a victory, any increase in profitability is very welcome.
Therefore, the time has come to make use of another tool widely used in the corporate environment for strategic planning: 3W2H, which represents “What”, “Who”, “When”, “How” and “How much” you need to play your plan. Are we going to reach our realistic goal of increasing profit by 10%? In that case:
- goal — increase profit by 10%;
- who — commercial and digital marketing;
- when — within 12 months;
- how — investing in SEO and social media;
- how much — R$ 10 thousand.
It is worth highlighting that defining a strategy is simpler than executing it, so much so that there are several cases of companies that develop a strategy, draw up a plan and fail to put it into practice successfully.
From this point comes the importance of perfect alignment between the manager and the entire company team, not only in the creation of the strategy but also in the entire action plan, at the risk of disregarding relevant points of the day-to-day business and little credibility of the planning created.
Break down the goal
Now that it’s much clearer what you want and what you’re going to do to get there, you can move on to the third stage within your new reality of business goals and objectives. Let’s say that, together with your partners , an opportunity to increase profits based on digital marketing actions was identified. After all, R$10,000 was allocated to invest.
Based on the action plan developed by the manager and the sales and marketing teams, a strategy based on content marketing and publications on social networks was developed. In the following way:
- every month the company blog will have at least 5 new publications;
- your social networks will be updated daily with new posts;
- Email marketing campaigns will be launched to nurture leads.
Combined efforts, the conversion of at least 10 customers per month is projected. Considering your company’s average ticket, this amount should be enough to generate a 10% increase in revenue even before the stipulated 12 months.
Therefore, the clearer and more objective your action plan is, the greater the team’s engagement will be. One because each professional will know their role and how to carry it out efficiently and two because the more simplified the process, the less chance of bottlenecks that harm the positive result and the achievement of goals.
Track the results
At this stage, the planning is already being carried out, and it is now time to measure the results obtained within what was initially projected. With reliable metrics, it becomes much easier to know whether or not your company is progressing towards the set objective.
Let’s assume now that, in the first month, the target of 10 closed deals turned out to be too bold and your actions resulted in only 6 new customers.
Based on this metric, you will be able to make the necessary adjustments so that, in the next period, you can achieve a result that puts you back on the path to a 10% increase in profits. To do this, you can reallocate the budget , investing more or even realigning the strategy with the sales and marketing team.
The main thing is that now you know exactly what to do. It’s very different from the previous scenario, in which only the strength of your thoughts guided your actions, isn’t it?
Develop a planning culture
Once you take the initiative to plan your business, you will see that it no longer makes sense to maintain your activities without controlling your actions. That fear of facing your company’s bank account statement and the discouragement of risking new solutions will give way to a keen sense of keeping track of everything your company spends and earns.
Once the process begins, the tendency is for it to improve over time. New criteria for decision-making are emerging, as the habit of measuring results and monitoring the evolution of activities develops.
In short, you will know how to identify the causes for the decrease in sales or performance as a whole, which will allow you to act, instead of lamenting. Planning is something that can be learned and improved over time, so start slowly, with your feet on the ground, and, little by little, outline bolder business goals and objectives.
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