Your strategic plan for the business should aim to set a target for what your business will look like in 5 years time or when it is complete. This can cover profits, type of business, business size, value, products, market position, unique selling points, etc. It is your vision of what it will look like.

You do firstly have to decide if the business you are in or are looking at is capable of delivering what you are pursuing. If it’s not an opportunity worth pursuing, it doesn’t matter how much you plan it, it won’t deliver what you want.

Your business strategy should be based on your standards and values if it is to tie in with your life plan.

Without this plan of where you are aiming to get to, it makes it far harder to get there. By having goals, it makes it easier to determine if what you are doing is moving you towards that goal or not and you can plan to put everything in place to get there.

It enables you to identify the key challenges that need to be overcome if you are to reach your goal. Once you know the challenges, the cause and the real effect of not meeting them, you can identify the most fundamental challenges and then establish how to overcome them.

Here are the kind of things to consider in the strategic objective for your business of what your business will look like in 5 years time and when it is complete…

• What type of business will you have?
• What products and services do you offer?
• How large is the business with reference to turnover, gross profit, costs and net profit?
• What will the growth be over the period with regards to sales, new products, new markets, and number of employees?
• What will be your market position?
• What reporting systems will you use?
• How will your employees be trained?
• What geographic markets will you supply?
• What will be unique about the business and what will be your unique selling points with regards to distinctive products, marketing, operations and customer service.
• How much is your business worth now and on completion?

Research on goal setting has proven the following helps people achieve their goals…

• It’s better to set your goals high rather than low.
• Write down your goals. People who write down their goals are far more likely to reach them. There is a saying, “if you don’t write something down, it doesn’t exist”.
• You can keep refining you goals and reviewing them as you go along. Things do change.

• Goals should be SMART goals to achieve the best results.  This stands for:

1. Specific – how much, for whom, for what, etc
2. Measurable
3. Achievable
4. Relevant
5. Time framed – by when

For example, having a goal to get rich is not a smart goal. However a goal of “to have £100,000 in the bank in 5 years time” could be a smart goal. It’s far easier to put the specific steps in place to achieve this type of goal.

• Goals such as “to be the best at what you do” or “to love what you do” tend to lead to people being more successful than “to make lots of money” goals. The money does come but it is a result of having more meaningful goals in the first place

Now we know where we’re going, we have to get there…

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