When you develop a business strategy, you determine the steps you need to take to achieve your business goals. Strategic planning is essential to your success because it breaks your plan down into specific action steps that will lead you to success. Don’t be afraid of strategy – it is actually quite fun, and successful strategy execution leads to results.
Know What You Want to Achieve
Before you can craft the pieces of a strategy, you must determine what you want to achieve; this becomes your goal. Then, you begin creating a plan to reach your ultimate goal with specific pieces of the plan to reach success. For instance, if your goal is to make a million dollars a year, you will sit down and calculate how you could achieve that number. You may complete one sale at a million dollars, ten sales at $100,000, or 20 sales at 50,000 – You have to figure out how many sales it will take to reach your goal. Then, you figure out how many sales you need to make each month and how much you will charge. An essential step in this process is to look at what you offer and determine its worth. Then you will design a strategy that goes into this offer, so it is worth its actual value.
Determine What Needs to Change
If you are not reaching the goals you have set for your business, you must evaluate what needs to be adjusted in your strategy to experience success. If you want to grow by 20%, you will have to adjust your strategy to reach your goal – something has to change. It is impossible to get that 20% increase without changing something; it could be time worked. At some point, you will run out of time, and when that happens, you will need to adjust your business model and work fewer hours for more money. To do this, you may have to shift to attract different clients that can pay more money. That is what strategy is all about; it shifts depending on your business goals. Strategy is a straightforward, numbers-driven process – if this is what you want, then this is what you need to do now to reach your goals.
Understand That Growth and Strategy Are Different
Many business owners think strategy and growth are synonymous terms, but they are not. Strategy leads to growth, but it is not, in itself, growth. I speak a good deal about sine waves in businesses – when you are working harder and not seeing results. The results you see may be based on working a great deal harder, but as soon as that drops off, your outcomes drop off, too. It drops because while you were working hard, you did not build your clientele and have clients and jobs in the funnel. You may grow for a season, but you did not execute your strategy, so you cannot sustain your growth. You end up right where you were to start with. Strategy is not growth, but it does lead to growth when followed and executed. Strategy must be mastered if you want to be successful in business.
At the Growth Architect, my goal is to help you develop a business strategy that will give you the map you need for success. If you want to learn more about building a better business strategy, then watch my video, and contact me when you are ready to create your growth strategy.
Let’s grow!
Beate
Beate Chelette is The Growth Architect & Founder of The Women’s Code, a training company specialized in providing companies an ROI on Balanced Leadership. She has been named one of 50 must-follow women entrepreneurs by the Huffington Post. A first-generation immigrant who found herself $135,000 in debt as a single parent, she bootstrapped her passion for photography into a highly successful global business and eventually sold it to Bill Gates in a multimillion-dollar deal.
Beate works with business leaders and supports organizations by developing and providing training the training, tools, and expertise to create and maintain a balanced, equal, and inclusive work environment that fosters creativity, employee engagement, and corporate growth.
Recent clients include Merck, Women’s Legislative Caucus of California, Cal State University Dominguez Hills, Small Business Development Centers (SBDC), NFTE, CreativeLive, the Association of Corporate Growth, and TracyLocke.
Beate is the author of the #1 International Amazon Bestseller “Happy Woman Happy World – How to Go From Overwhelmed to Awesome” a book that corporate trainer and best-selling author Brian Tracy calls “a handbook for every woman who wants health, success and a fulfilling career.
To book Beate to speak or train please connect here. Your Time Is Valuable!