A good business growth plan is strategic. It takes you from where you are today (with your resources, abilities, and vision) to where you want to be in the future. “The future” should be a fixed point in the future, say three to five years out. When you look at your business growth plan in this way, it’s clear that you’ll need to revise it regularly.
After all, the future is a moving target, meaning you’ve got to move, too.
It’s time to think about how you’re going to revise your business growth plan. With the new year you’ll see some changes: a different set of resources, possibly some personnel changes, perhaps some changes in the local economy or your specific industry. Responding to these changes and incorporating them into your growth plan will help you to not only weather potential storms but to take advantage of new opportunities.
As you revise your growth plan you’ll be making order out of previous experience, and you’ll channel all of your best efforts toward growth. Here are four ways to revise your growth plan.
1. Talk to Your Customers
Find a way to get valuable feedback from clients and potential customers. This can be as formal as an online survey in which you can gather and quantify data, or it can be as informal as talking with your customers when you’re in front of them. Don’t seek compliments; look for criticism. Your goal here should be to come up with specific ways you can improve your products and customer service to better meet consumer demand.
2. Examine Market Segmentation
Business owners generally see certain groups or division within the market: type of product, region, store, etc. While these divisions can be useful in many ways, they can also narrow your view and cause you to miss certain opportunities. Try to come up with new market segmentation. For example, if you usually divide your market by type of product, try segmenting it by buyer or channel. You might be surprised how the changes in perspective help you to see opportunities or challenges that you couldn’t see before.
3. Look at the Larger Potential Market
Try taking a step back to see the changing trends and technologies affecting your industry. It can help to look at your competitors and see what kinds of changes they’re making. Are they adopting new products and services? Is customer preference changing as a result of new technologies? This information can give you important insights for your growth plan revisions.
4. Create New Milestones
Based on the information you’ve gathered, create milestones for the coming year. What benchmarks will help you to know that your business growth plan is succeeding? Don’t forget to include milestones that don’t fall into your financials. It will be helpful in 2017 if you review and update these milestones every month or two. A lot can change between January and September.
Remember that a good business growth plan is never done. You can’t predict the future, no matter how much experience you have, so you’ll need to update your plan regularly to reflect the changing realities of your business, industry, and the overall economy.
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