Launching In To 2021 With Business Goals

Christmas has been and the New Year has just begun, now is the time to reflect, plan and get motivated for the rest of 2019. You would do well to quickly re-read my previous blog ‘Part1' before launching into the all important ‘Part 2’. This way you’ll make the most of the excellent business advice, encouragement and strategies as you prepare to have a successful and rewarding 2021.

Strategy:
“Sound strategy starts with having the right goal” – Michael Porter

We have our goals now we can form our strategy. To often its tempting to just jump into the fray and start figuring out how to “do” the nitty gritty stuff. Working “in the business” is the term that gets thrown around, you’ve probably heard it before. Strategy is the working “on” the business part.
We need to work out what actions we’re going to take now which will set us up for success when it comes to realising our goals.

For example, maybe our goal is to increase our earnings before interest and tax (that holy grail of ever increasing EBIT). Are we going to do that by selling more widgets? If so where are we going to get the widgets from? Do we make them ourselves or do we need to source them from somewhere else? Can we extend our supplier terms and improve our use of money? Can we figure out ways to get paid faster and improve the velocity of money flowing into the business? Can we make our operating expenses more efficient and sell the same widgets more profitably? Are there new markets that we can enter or new opportunities that we can take advantage of?

Maybe our goal is to increase gross revenue and sell more of our product or service. How do we going about doing this? What’s the best way to market ourselves in order to increase sales? There’s an often used quote that gets drummed into every marketing student and repeated through the corporate world:

“In marketing I’ve seen only one strategy that can’t miss. That is to market to your best customers first, your best prospects second and the rest of the world last” – John Romero.

This is a proven strategy which universally applies to all business. If our goal is increased sales then this well tested strategy is one that’s well worth borrowing.

Tactics:
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat” – Sun Tzu
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We have our goals. We have our strategy. Now we need to figure out how to implement our strategy. This is the tactics, this is where we are specific about the actions that we will take to ensure that our strategy is successful. This is where we not only plan on which clients to market to, but how we will market to them and when. In planning out our strategy we may have decided that running specific campaigns has been a success in the past and something that we’ll do again in new year. What we need to do now is be intentional and specific about:

• What the campaign or campaigns will be.
• When they will be rolled out.
• What will be the measure of success.

If it’s a new widget that we’re going to promote then the same questions apply. If it’s a new service then again we need to be specific and intentional about how we will launch the service what the measures of success look like.

Take the time over the next couple of weeks to reflect, plan and set yourself up for a successful, happy and fulfilling 2019.

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I’ll spend the first four sharpening the axe” – Abraham Lincoln''

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