You’ve spent years building a business. Now, you’re building a robust yet efficient plan that elevates its value. The RACE Model guided you through the planning process by:
- Researching the Essentials
- Analyzing the Impacts
- Creating the Plan Including Targets and Contingencies
- Executing the Plan and Track the Results
Just like any plan, contract or blueprint, the details are important and, often, determine success. And, to help ensure tailwinds versus headwinds, a business plan is as unique as the business itself. The plan’s scale should provide enough guidance to target resources and eliminate quickly waste and initiatives that are not consistent with strategy.
Main Imperatives for Business Growth
A sample business plan for commercial integrators should include imperatives or priorities designed to deliver the growth vision for the business. Don’t be distracted by the goals versus objectives debate and about all the SMART misnomers. Create simple, actionable imperatives by functional area or importance to the business.
Examples of Imperatives
Each imperative should have a success metric, be timely and include the foundation for the vision.
- Sales: Drive X-plus % revenue by growing core customer business while developing new customers in diverse commercial sectors (e.g., expand into restaurants, condo MDUs, etc.).
- Sales/Operations: Estimate and execute projects that deliver a gross profit target of X%.
- Operations: Streamline operational efficiencies by X% and expand capabilities to sustain X new commercial sectors.
- Finance: Realize a minimum of X% profit, and ensure clear, clean financial records with effective budgeting, processes and controls.
- Marketing: Drive incremental awareness and engagement among customers and prospects through omnichannel campaigns linked to sales.
- Quality: Continuous improvement in quality by delivering no non-conformities (or installation errors) with efficient processes and resource allocations.
Take advantage of the opportunity to energize your team. Empower them to research impacts and create recommendations. Allow them to own a big bet or two according to their functional expertise and responsibility. Ownership brings an additional benefit of fueling a rewarding culture where team members are allowed to shine, grow, and connect across the organization.
If your business has enough scale, appoint a strategic planning process lead. This can be a member of your leadership team and should include accountability to maintain the timeline and tactically track results. Regular reporting on progress and scheduling key dates to ensure that key deliverables are on-track. Post the imperatives as a scorecard for the entire team.
Along with business planning and cultural benefits, link your performance management process to the business plan. Specifically, tie team performance to the plan, identify each employee’s role and contribution, and plan compensation around achieving the plan’s provisions.
Beware of One Big Bet
Avoid a common issue among business leaders is over-reliance on a single big bet. This propensity is easy to understand. For example, sales is an easy, even elementary, bet to grow topline revenue. Moreover, our commercial integration industry, most industries, is built on relationships. On the surface, sales meets that opportunity with a uniquely individual strength. However, relying on a single big bet is like investing only in a single reserve. Cash is convenient, reliable, comfortable and meets the calling of long-gone advisors. But no investor or planner would rely on a cash-only portfolio for optimal returns.
Just like diversified portfolios, business planning should rely on a reasonable number of big bets to grow your business. Think of a poker hand comprising a single card. The risk of loss is highest with maximum needs to create a winning hand. A strong hand with four valuable cards is a much better bet.
Big bets create a delicate balance. The fewer in number, the riskier each bet becomes, while a higher number can create distraction and dilute an effective plan. Typically, for integrators, a business plan with four to six strategic bets strike an appropriate balance. Like a full hand, expanding bets across the functional areas of your business mitigates that risk and offers greater propensity for success.
The Bottom Line
Planning is a big bet for all — not just big businesses. It should not be a monumental task that consumes onerous resources, especially time. It can provide efficient fuel to power your business through success and help endure struggle.
As integrators, your business plan can be a valuable addition to your team by producing results and ensuring efficient operations throughout the year. Take care of your plan as it takes care of your business. Give it the fuel and resources to succeed. Once completed, communicate it and post it. Eliminate questions. Charge all team members with its success.
Hopefully, you now realize that planning is as important as funding and sustaining your business. And, that right-sized planning that engages and inspires your team is the key to sustained business success. Imagine looking back in 20 years on a track record of thoughtful, carefully planned growth.
Watch for the next article which includes tools to drive profitable growth by understanding the true cost basis of your business.
Ron Pence is an accomplished business executive with CI industry experience.
