Are You Strategic, or Just Wishing?

It’s that time of year again. No, not the time for Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays. No, not the time when the ringing of the Salvation Army bells serenade our every entrance into Wal-Mart. And no, not just one more year when we wipe the dust off the Festivus pole and let the good times roll.

I’m talking about the “Upcoming Year’s Strategy” time of year.

Heaven forbid we think of a strategy for next year a moment sooner than in the final days of this year. Regardless of how much we will vow to have our strategies for the year after wrapped up by the end of the third quarter, it never happens.

So for those of you entering strategic crunch time, best identified by voluminous Powerpoint presentations for large, bored groups of executives, and peppered with words like “penetrate” and “incremental volume,” heed this warning: don’t do what you normally do.

You see, my experience has shown me that most people confuse the words “strategy” and “wish.” They’ll bellow decrees of how 2011 will be the year we increase sales, or boost recruiting, or retain more customers. Sounds great; who doesn’t want to do any of that stuff?

But it’s not a strategy.

Wishes usually encompass only the “what.” They answer the question, “What do you want to see happen?” Wishes don’t bother with the execution side of it; that’s some genie’s job.

In our minds, we’re our industry’s Patton; the field general who makes stuff happen. In reality, we are Geppetto, wishing upon a star, hoping the blue fairy shoes up and taps our Pinnochio on the shoulder.

But what keeps wishes from becoming a reality is that we rarely bother to answer the remaining questions, because they haven’t even been asked. We hope the wish grows legs and figures out everything else on its own. Once it does, we’ll be hovering around it, nurturing it, coddling it, hoping it sticks around and does what we want it to.

7 Questions to Ask for Strategic Planning

Contrary to popular belief, you have a lot more control and influence over this kind of stuff. Here are the other questions you should be asking as 2011 approaches:

1. Who is gonna make your wishes come true? Good marketing starts with the market, not the marketing. Are your current customers going to make things happen in 2011? Are certain segments going to be responsible? Are there specific folks out there that aren’t your customer yet that should be, and they, in turn, will make your wishes come true? Who do you need to focus on in 2011? Once you answer this question, the others become much easier to answer.
2. Why are you wishing all this stuff in the first place? Yes, you should always start with the “Why.” No, it doesn’t happen too often. When you’ve been entrenched in your company’s culture for months, years, even decades, it’s way too easy to take your mission for granted and completely forget the reason you’re in business. So back up a second and ask these questions: Why are we in business? Why do our customers love us? Why do customers leave us? Why do we bother? Why are we better at what we do than anyone else?
3. How will you make your wishes come true? Once you know why you’re wishing, what you’re wishing and who’s gonna make the wishes come true, then and only then should you talk about how you’re going to do it. This is actually what strategy is: the “how you gonna do it” part of your plan. To start, keep this at a high level. How will we increase sales? How will we keep more customers? Notice that strategy answers add prepositional phrases that start with “by.” See below:”We’re going to increase sales.” = a wish
   “We’re going to increase sales by supporting our northwest sales leaders more through events and coupons.” = a strategy

   “We are going to be more innovative.” = a wish
   “We’re going to be more innovative by hiring five specialized experts in product development.” = a strategy

4. Where will your wishes come true? At this point, we’re nearing the tactical stage of your planning. This can be geography, or media-based. Where will you focus your efforts? In Oregon? Online? In the field? At the office? This can be closely related to the “who question,” but it goes a little further. It could look like …”We will improve  our customer retention by increasing interactions on our Facebook page.” The Facebook page is the “where.”
5. When will your wishes come true? OK, the default answer should not be Dec. 31, 2011. Start adding some deadlines to your wishes. Are your tactics seasonal? Event-based? Or do you simply need to set a date so it gets done? Does your wish become irrelevant after a certain date?
6. Repeat the how, where and when. Once you set certain strategies in place that define how you will make your wishes come true, you then have to figure out how you’ll accomplish each strategy. So, apply questions 3-5 to each specific strategy. This is deep into the tactical phase, where all the details start coming together. How will I set up my events and coupons in the northwest? When must begin promoting these events? Where will each individual event take place?
7. How much is it all gonna cost? It’s only at this point that you can put together a realistic budget. But I bet you don’t do it this way. I bet you take a shot in the dark at your budget, because there’s a hard due date for it, and then figure out what you can do with all that money. That’s stupid. Figure out how much money it’s gonna cost to do all this stuff to make your wishes come true. If you don’t have enough money, see if you can cut anything in step #6 without greatly sacrificing the end result. If not, you’ll have to forego one or more of your wishes. It sucks, but that’s how it goes.

I know there could be ton more questions added. However, in my experiences, if the big dogs (and lil’ dogs) would just go through this exercise, we’d all be in better shape, and our plans would be much more realistic and accurate.

What questions are missing? What process do you go through for your annual planning?