Strategic Planning: It’s Never Too Late (Or Too Early) to Start

(This is a guest post by Jade Scott of the CEB Communications Leadership Council, our sister program for communications professionals. We thought the information here will be useful as sales leaders revisit their strategic plans, and look to establish Sales’ mandate for the next year.)

These days, conversations with members in the network are filled with questions, ideas and brainstorming about resource allocation, budgeting, re-organization, and hiring new talent. As we have greater expectations placed on ourselves to create greater value for the business and to ensure the team’s talent bench is built out for success, we realize that something in our current process and strategy has to change. Even with all the focus on re-allocating and re-organizing, there’s still a wealth of opportunity when it comes to the current team’s ability and capacity to create strategic plans.

Close your eyes for a minute and picture a strategic plan. If, in your mind, you see a binder of many pages, sitting on a shelf and gathering dust, then you’re likely seeing the traditional old-school 5-, 10-, 20-year strategic plan. But what we’re talking about today is more of the living, breathing, actionable, innovative strategic plan. This plan is engineered from corporate strategy and business objectives, and easily translated into action steps. It should be simple, modifiable, and easy to execute by others.

It’s tough in the day-to-day to think about strategy…to consider how every tactic, or ask of the team, relates back to the company’s priorities and objectives for the year… but for those teams that have taken a concerted effort to create a strategic plan for the year, and to develop a strategic plan for major initiatives, those teams are able to be more pointed in their tactics, more consultative in their support and are much more capable of sorting through high vs. low value work.

So how do your fellow executives approach strategic planning with their teams? When speaking to a senior executive the other day, I asked about her team’s strategic planning efforts and who is responsible for building these plans. She answered candidly, “I create the strategic plans for my team and there is only one other person who I trust to develop them besides me.” Her next comment was that often it’s tough to get everyone on the same page, particularly those team members or leaders of other functions that aren’t involved in the planning process.

It’s understandable that teams don’t need everyone to be focused on strategic planning, nor do teams need a strategic plan for every initiative. Yet everyone in the function is capable or should be capable of strategic thinking.

I talked to another senior executive a few weeks ago and he said he and his team create a plan for every big initiative that comes across their desks. They take a painstaking amount time to figure out the messages they want to share, the channels they’ll use, even the owners for the communication. Yet, he admitted that even with all of this work, it’s hard for the team to take action on this plan, to see how these initiatives relate to corporate priorities and it’s very tough to measure success.

4 Smart Steps to Strategic Planning:

When it comes to strategic planning, here are 4 key steps that the most progressive teams follow:

1.  Establish Objectives

Uncover desired business outcomes
Identify the target audiences
Define your key objectives

2.  Understand Audience Motivations

Deepen your understanding of the audience
Determine the appropriate channels to reach these audiences

3.  Create Action Plan

Select outcome-focused metrics – ask: what is the call to action?
Create a one-, two-, three-page action plan that readers can tack up and reference throughout the planning, roll-out and implementation process

4.  Track and Report Progress

Here’s where the creativity kicks in: develop and execute messaging – ask: how can leaders, employees, customers share this message?
Measure and report on progress – ask other leaders: what does success look like?

So, here’s a suggestion for the next round. Try out this 4-step process, adjusting and customizing it to fit your company’s unique needs, and let us know how it goes. Or, charge a few of the more junior members on your team to try their hand at this step-by-step process. Not only will this signal your trust and confidence in their abilities, but it will also provide an opportunity to develop critical and strategic thinking skills. It’s never too late (or too early for that matter) to start!

Tell us – what cool things are you doing with strategy plans? Discuss in the comments section below!

CEB Sales Related Resources

Anatomy of a World-Class Sales Organization
Toyota Motor Corporation: Strategic Objectives Heat Map
Eli Lilly’s Strategy Assumptions Cascade

CEB Sales Related Blogs

3 Ways to Get Strategic Planning Right