Do you need a 90 Day Plan?

This question has been on my mind a lot lately. I think too many business owners miss out on the benefits of business planning because they dread the big business plan. What they should have is the not-so-big business plan as part of a planning process. That was boiling the process down to just four important pieces.

1. Define Success:If you like buzzwords, you could call this long-term objectives, or long-term goals. It’s way more important than most people realize. Not all business is intended to simply grow sales and make profits and eventually sell out to somebody else; a lot of businesses are intended to empower founders, develop independence, do what somebody wants to do, still be home when the kids get back from school, or still have time to travel. All business planning should keep the real goals in mind. It’s about achieving what you want. And notice, please, that this is not about the document. It’s about the content. Keep track of it any way you want, as text, bullet points, even pictures.
   1.  “Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.” Winston Churchill.
2. Focus: You can’t do everything. You can’t please everybody. Strategy is focus, often defined by what you don’t do. Think about your strengths and weaknesses, where you want to concentrate attention. You’re not credible when you promise everything to everybody. Focus on a well-defined target market, and understand who isn’t in your market. Focus on a well-defined product offering. And here too, it doesn’t have to be a document. You want to write it down so you can track it later (see number four, below). It could be bullet points, simple text reminders, even pictures.
   1.  “Success depends on getting good at saying no without feeling guilty. You cannot get ahead with your own goals if you are always saying yes to someone else’s projects. You can only get ahead with your desired lifestyle if you are focused on the things that will produce that lifestyle.”  Jack Canfield
3. Understand Meaningful Steps: Strategy without implementation is just blue sky, intangible, meaning nothing. Make it real with dates, deadlines, task responsibilities, and measurements you can track. The best measurements are those basic numbers you really ought to have: projected sales, cost of sales, and expense budgets. Don’t forget that there are also measurements beyond the accounting statements, like sales calls, presentations, units sold, leads, minutes per call, media mentions, and so on. People like having specific measurements as part of their job responsibilities. Form and format? Maybe just a few simple spreadsheet tables, including milestones with dates and task responsibilities, sales forecast, and expense budgets. And whatever other measurements you can manage.
   1. “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business.” Henry Ford
4. Manage the Planning Process: The initial plan is just the beginning. What makes the real difference for your business is managing the implementation of the plan, keeping the planning process alive, reviewing progress towards goals, watching for changing assumptions, and revising. We could all it course corrections. Your plan sets down what was supposed to happen, and your follow-up catches what did and didn’t happen, why, and what to do next. Planning isn’t about predicting the future accurately; it’s about managing change, and reacting to change.
   1. “Set your course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.”  Omar N. Bradley