Does your company’s business
plan always tend to have the same approach – the annual plan is based on
growing sales and profits steadily through incremental line extensions, a
variation on last year’s promotions or low-risk geographic expansion? Is your planning
process often more about controlling costs and risk than driving significant
growth?
“Growing
sales 3-5% in in our key product segments combined with some targeted cost
cutting will allow us to achieve our financial goals.”
Does
your annual business planning process fall short of generating breakthrough
ideas that could achieve real step-changes in growth?
If you are hitting your
financial targets year after year, staying on the current plan could make
sense. It could be the right fit for
your company. But for others, if you are
not growing as fast as you or your stakeholders would like, or if your
competitors are out innovating you, it could be time to consider a fresh
approach.
It may be time to invest in new
product or marketing innovation, but the first innovation you may want to
consider is in your planning process.
Sometimes an organization’s commitment to its annual planning ritual can
be a constraint to achieving significant year-on-year growth.
As a strategic growth
consultant, I often see companies that either have not identified or pursued
new opportunities, or they have created enough of their own roadblocks that
they cannot achieve their growth aspirations.
They are so used to planning incrementally that they miss key
opportunities to transform their company and achieve breakthrough growth.
Looking
back on your career, have you worked for companies that:
- Just updated the promotional
calendar each year to align with last year’s events?
- Only developed and launched new
products that were close-in line extensions because the risk of failure
was lower – but often just ended up cannibalizing existing sales?
- Defined their market segments so
tightly that there was little room for growth?
- Spent time and money each year
just to churn customers with competitors – with the real results being
lower prices, lower margins and modest, if any, share gains?
If
these are familiar scenarios, let me share three planning steps to try this planning cycle to help you
identify potential new approaches to accelerate your success. They include:
- Revisit what made you successful – What insights from your
success-to-date can be applied to drive new growth with new products or
new markets?
- Redefine to create new advantage – Change the definition of your
market to allow you to change how you go to market.
- Remove the barrier – what is holding you back from achieving greater
growth? How will you remove both internal and external barriers – or
change the game so they no longer constrain you?
Here
are some examples of how to apply these steps when reviewing different
components of your business plan:
Who
you are selling?
- Revisit: Which customer segments value your brand and your
products? Why? Are there other customer segments that
are similar that would also value your brand for the same reasons? (e.g. travel gear vs. camping gear)
- Redefine: Is your market defined too narrowly? Can you expand the definition of who you
are selling by redefining your market.
Either expand up or down the supply chain or expand to include
other segments in the larger category that includes you. (e.g. breakfast buyers vs. breakfast
cereal buyers)
- Remove: Remove barriers to purchase by being available in new
channels, in new forms or at new price points (e.g. develop a special pack
that will help you gain distribution into new retailers – or – add
ecommerce as a sales channel)
What
you are selling?
- Revisit: the benefits
and attributes that differentiate you vs. the category you compete
in. (e.g. easy-to-use, stylish,
unbreakable)
- Redefine: What are adjacent categories where you can apply these
same attributes to introduce relevant new products that go beyond line
extensions to your core market.
- Remove: Remove resistance to launching into new
categories. Put together a new
product development team that combines brand experience and product
development strength with fresh innovative thinking. Do not include people who are locked
into old biases and approaches that could limit the potential of your new
innovations.
How
you are selling?
- Revisit: How are you engaging, educating, exciting your target
and how do you close the sale?
- Redefine: How you disrupt your target customer in new ways to
enable them to clearly see the differentiated value in your products
versus competitors.
- Remove: Remove your own sales prevention processes that create
friction for customers trying to do business with you. Take a fresh look at how easy or hard it
is to buy from you.
Before
you introduce these planning steps, look at your internal planning team.
Do they view the planning process as an opportunity or a burden? Do they take delight or dread being on the
company’s annual planning team? Is it
time to bring some fresh perspective onto the planning team by including others
beyond department heads and your finance staff?
This
is one set of tools to energize your planning process.
If you are on calendar year timing for your fiscal year, your planning
process will begin soon. Look at how you
can infuse your planning this year with new energy and some fresh
thinking. If your company’s planning
team is resistant, consider bringing in someone from the outside to help your
team take a fresh look with the help of an outsider’s perspective. This could be the year you develop the plan
that changes the future of your company!
GrowthSpring Group
is a marketing innovation and growth strategy firm focused on accelerating your
sales and profit growth. We help you identify new business growth insights
& opportunities and execute winning strategies & plans. www.GrowthSpringGroup.com
