Make a plan to plan

What is a business plan? A business plan is a document that defines your company’s objectives and how it plans to achieve its goals. The plan serves as a written road map or playbook to help guide your organization to achieve the goals you have established.

This road map or playbook may cover several key areas that need focus including marketing, sales, financials, people, customers, operations, competitors, best practices/SOPS, KPIs and current trends, to name just a few possibilities.

How to plan/suggested steps

Here are some simple tips to prepare for and conduct a planning session.

Preparation is needed before you start planning. We suggest you gather as much information beforehand as possible. Here is a list of items to consider:

• Employee and customer surveys

• Financial reports

• Sales reports and results

• Lessons learned, both good and not so good

• Hold one-on-one sessions with key employees to get their input

This can be a sensitive area and you need to be careful and considerate. Sometimes it’s hard to invite some and not others to this process. Be sure to send the invite at least a couple of weeks ahead of time so they can plan on being there and coming prepared.

Generally, the planning meeting should be held a couple of months before the start of a new fiscal year. For most companies, this is from October to Dec. 15. At this time of year you have enough info to use from the current year and you’ll have your new plan completed, reviewed and adopted prior to the start of the next fiscal year. The plan will bring “fresh legs” and positive energy for a great start to the new year.

Make an agenda with expectations spelled out and if the participants need to prepare anything for the planning session. Be sure to start on time and end on time. If there are problems, issues or missed opportunities that need to be resolved, spend 10% of the time talking about the problem and 90% deciding on the solution and action steps to remedy or move forward.

If possible, we suggest these be held “off campus” vs. your place of business. We usually like to hold them at a quiet location, maybe even at one of your client’s facilities like a hotel, a quiet back room of a restaurant or the HOA clubhouse.

Meetings vary depending on the size and complexity of your company and where it is heading. At the minimum, this will require a four-hour or half-day session. For larger, more complex companies, this can take as long as two days.

If this is new for your organization, having a meeting facilitator is a good idea. If you feel confident in your experience with meeting facilitation skills, then go for it.

Be prepared to determine what areas your business needs to work on. Examples include your vision and mission statement, marketing and sales, customers, people, financials, SWOT analysis, etc. Decide on the top three areas to focus on along with up to five simple fix-it items. Keep it simple and specific.

Build your plan for a three-year horizon to strive toward, then build your plan from year one working each year to the three-year mark.

Assign champions and co-champions to the key areas of focus and give them the needed resources to get these key areas implemented and measured.

Pick one to three key areas that will have the most positive impact on the organization and assign champions to these areas. Identify time frames to accomplish and define how you will measure/use key performance indicators to show the results of your efforts. Review your progress monthly at the minimum and don’t wait until next year’s planning session to review.

Do not file your plan or store it in a drawer. Monitor your performance to see if you are making progress toward your objectives. Your plan will assist you in identifying what is working and what isn’t so adjustments can be made.

Revisit your strategy, and develop and update it as you gain knowledge and experience about your market, your people, your customers and the competition.

If you follow these tips, you should be in a good position to start building your plan.

Cream of the Crop features a rotating panel from the Harvest Group, a landscape business consulting company. Bill Arman is a landscape business consultant who spent nearly 30 years at one of the industry’s biggest companies. he can be reached at bill@harvestlandscapeconsulting.com