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Strategic Planning Consultant—How to Find the Right One
If you hire a strategic planning consultant that thinks like most of the world that’s likely what you’ll get…something that’s average and just like everyone else. One of the things that drives how I look at businesses is derived from the Small Business Administration’s statement that over 80% of all small businesses will fail within the first 2 years, and over 90% by 5 years. What that says is, to just succeed, to stay alive those businesses have to think and act like only 10% of the other businesses. And that’s just to survive!!! And when most businesses start out they start out by looking at most of the other businesses out there and then copy them. Of course, as I mentioned above, 90% aren’t going to make it, and those are the ones everyone is copying. So, let’s take that another step. If your strategic plan looks like everyone else what is likely to happen to you? If you hire a strategic planning consultant that does it the traditional way what is likely to happen to you? OK, for a few of you, you’ve already been around for a while, and may have even grown to a fair size. So, what! According to Jim Collins in Good to Great most of the really good businesses are just doing everything the same as the others. To be truly great means that you have to reach to find ways to be really different and to think different. The traditional strategic planning approach is
Develop a vision
Of course the vision usually follows the traditional “We’ll be the biggest and baddest [whatever I am] on the block.” I could tear that up in 50 ways,
Change that to Developing a SUPER Powerful Vision One that will drive the business forward by leaps and bounds, faster than a speeding bullet. The point here is we could LIVE with what other businesses are doing and just maybe get OK results. Or if we aren’t willing to be just like everyone else then we are going to find a Super Powerful Vision where we are seen so far above our competitors, and we will be driven to always reach further than we previously ever thought possible. Let’s just talk about how to make that a really powerful Super Powerful statement and Super vision instead of a mild mannered one. I’ve seen companies suddenly leap forward by finding that super vision. So, how are we going to do that. One approach is to define what are the measurable results our clients get. Are those results outstanding or not? Sometimes they already are…then terrific, let’s find the best way to tell the world. Are those measurable results average, just like all of our competitors? Then how can we make them super powerful? What is it that our customers would really like to see happen and why? Then don’t deliver just average results, find something that is so knock-their-socks-off powerful for your client and deliver it. Are those measureable results less than what they’d get from our competitors? Why? What would make you a Super Player in this industry? Are you trying to compete on price? Is this where you should be? Or, if it is, then what you make you a super player in the low end market? Check out an article, “30 Seconds to Explosive Networking and Sales” that develops a worksheet on how to find some of the measureable results you get for a customer. Back to the original, and weak, vision of being the “Biggest and baddest [whatever it is you are] on the block” that begs a key question. If you are to be the “biggest and baddest” on the block, then what does that look like? How big [in dollars and cents, or number of customers, or whatever] is that really? If you can’t measure it you can’t really know how to get there, nor know if you are even going in that direction. These are not simple answers to find. When I start helping a client work through these questions most turn white, and some just refuse to make a commitment about actual results. Marketing Plan--Once you know the measureable results you are delivering to customers, now you develop a marketing plan around those measureable results.
Sales plan--
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