SMALL BUSINESS STRATEGY..
Small business strategic planning begins with analyzing your current strategic position. This involves understanding the external and internal environment of your organization and identifying your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,
An analysis of the internal environment of your organization helps you understand your strengths and weakness. As a result of analyzing the external environment, you gain insights regarding the opportunities and threats present.
they have any small business first of all the focusing to our communication skills improvement.
5 BASIC RULES OF SMALL BUSINESS STRATEGY.
1. Include the right people
Often business owners are resistant to share information out of fear that it will end up in the wrong hands. So they keep a tight circle on who they have strategic conversations with. The problem with this is that the people closest to the customers are the ones with the most information about their problems, and potential solutions. In many companies, capable employees are unwilling to share their opinions. We encourage our clients to include as many people who they can trust (and who can think strategically) in their strategic planning process, and that tends to be a wider circle than they might expect.
2. Gather the data
Having access to pertinent market data is the number one barrier for most small businesses. Like investment bankers, we access industry reports on behalf of our clients but that is not practical for most businesses. However, there is a wealth of free information available at sources such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis and low cost consumer research tools at sites such as gutcheckit.com.Also, companies often do a poor job capturing and mining internal data. Every company should segment their reporting by channel, customer, product categories, etc. Surveying your strategy participants is also a useful way to gather information and rank strategic issues by importance.If you are a really small company, these principles may be executed with five people but it is still the same.
3. Expect preparation
Strategic planning is garbage in, garbage out. Every person participating in strategic planning should be expected to prepare for a strategy conversation, whether that be by developing information or learning more about the mechanics of the business.
4. Create the right environment
Creating a safe harbor, a place where people feel safe about having strategy conversations is as important as making sure the physical environment (such as an off-site location) is suited to creativity. Many companies hire facilitators to keep the meeting on track.
5. Build your plan
Entrepreneurs have a lot of anxiety about writing a plan but it is actually the easy part if you have done your homework. Components of a strategic plan usually include things like an executive summary, financial projections, SWOT analysis, external factors, market/competitive analysis, vision map and action plan.
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