One important, and often forgotten, aspects of running a successful business is strategic planning.
Many people may confuse a strategic plan with a business plan, but they have different purposes.
A business plan will focus on the viability of a business and usually focus on a short time period. A strategic plan is the map for you to follow to keep your business successful and growing.
Starting Your Strategic Plan
One easy way to be strategic is by doing a SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
Examine these four aspects, and begin to build from there:
- Find your strengths, and how you could advertise those or make them even better.
- Name your weaknesses, and think of ways to either get better at those things or find the best ways to minimize them.
- For opportunities, look to what other businesses lack that you could provide or events you can attend to gain more of an audience.
- Threats could be what other businesses may do better, from their products or services to their marketing. Find a way to get around potentials threats or to improve your own business to combat threats.
By starting with the SWOT analysis you will get a lot of information about both your business and your competitors. With this data, you can create a list of priorities.
Decide what you believe is most and least important.
This will assist you in creating a realistic vision for the future of your business. The vision will then guide you in your strategic planning.
Here’s a good visual for your strategic planning.
Why Do You Need a Strategic Plan?
One of the best things about having a strategic plan is that it gives you clarity. With a clear vision, you will be able to plan better, not just for the positives but also the negatives.
For instance, take your SWOT analysis and look at what may happen in the next three years. Then, decide what you need to work on.
This information will also allow you to make plans for what you should do if certain threats or weaknesses begin to hamper your business.
Planning for these potential problems ahead of time will lead to less stress if they become a reality, and may help you solve issues sooner.
For Your Future
Creating a strategic plan for your business will be one of the best things you can do this year for the future of your business.
Planning for possibilities in your future in a strategic manner will allow you to navigate positive or negative developments. This will help you grow and move forward through any challenges you face.
Contact the Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center for guidance on putting together a plan tailored to your business.