Issue 7: New Year’s Resolutions

New Year is a time for three great traditions: overindulgence, reminiscing, and making bold resolutions that get broken a few weeks later.

In the business world, the equivalent of the New Years resolution is the annual strategic plan. Bold thoughts and ideas which a few short weeks later have usually been consigned to
the shelf as the realities of client work and "making the numbers" kick in.

Don’t get me wrong, as an ex-strategy consultant I’ve built more than my fair share of corporate strategies: from scenario planning and wargaming through to traditional analytical strategy.

But over the years I’ve become increasingly aware that the critical component in driving business success is more to do with the quality of implementing the strategy than the quality of the strategy itself.

Yet that’s the exact opposite of where most firms devote their time and energy.

The typical strategy process in a professional firm starts and ends with an offsite where the senior partners discuss, debate and compromise on high level goals for the firm. Eventually, to a sigh of relief from all concerned, they emerge from the session clutching an updated mission or strategy statement.

And often, that’s as far as it goes.

The strategy has been hard-debated and discussed. The merits of running a seminar series vs focusing on the web have been argued over. Budgets have been negotiated and targets set. But the strategy remains more in the realm of intent than action. Detailed planning and implementation is viewed as an "operational task" and delegated.

But until you turn your strategic intents into strategic action plans, the chances are that implementation will stutter and fail. Knowing you want to run more seminars or speak at more events is a great intention. But devoid of an action plan it’s just not likely to happen. Without all the action steps laid out and accountabilities and timelines assigned, the pressures of day-to-day activities will take precedence and things just won’t happen.

A good strategy will have clearly identified target clients for the firm and have selected the most effective marketing and business development approaches to use to engage with those target clients. What’s now needed are Strategic Action Plans which lay out how each of the selected approaches (strategies) will be implemented.

Developing Strategic Action Plans

Strategic Action Plans needn’t be complex – in fact it’s better if they’re not. But they must have four characteristics:

• They must by owned by a partner who is accountable for ensuring they are delivered on
• They must lay out in simple terms the critical action steps to implement a single strategy (marketing or business development approach)
• They must define the key deliverables and timelines for the strategy, along with the resources and budget required to achieve them
• Progress against the plan must be measurable – and be measured

So, for example, if one strategy is for the firm or a practice area to generate more leads by speaking at high profile events, then the Strategic Action Plan needs to answer a number of questions:

• What are the goals of this strategy? How many client contacts and new clients are we targeting? What value of sales from clients found via this channel? How many events should we speak at?
• Which specific potential clients are being targeted by this strategy?
• What sort of topics would attract them to events and motivate them to engage further with the firm?
• Which events will attract the right attendees? Who runs the events? How can we contact them? What will motivate them to allow us to speak at these events?
• What materials do we need to support the talks?
• What is our "lead magnet" to get attendees to connect with us further (an offer of a more detailed free report, a follow-up meeting, a free diagnostic?)
• How will we nurture leads we’ve generated over time to turn them into clients?
• Who are the right people in our firm to speak at the events? To support them at each event? To follow-up with leads?
• Which partner will be accountable overall for the implementation and success of the plan?
• What are the timescales and deadlines for events and the activities that lead up to them?
• How will we measure progress of our preparation? When will we do the first event? How many events per month will we aim for after that? How will we track progress generating leads and following up?

Some of these questions can be answered immediately when drawing up the plan. Others will require further research and so the research activities will become action steps on the plan themselves.

Crafting this strategic action plan: thinking through the objectives, the critical success factors to achieving the plan, the action steps to deliver it; is just as challenging a task as developing the high level strategies themselves. But it’s one that’s frequently skipped.

It’s best done by the accountable partner with a small team of experienced professionals and marketers/business developers. If you’re a sole practitioner, draw up a tentative plan yourself then review it with an experienced business partner or friend whose opinion you respect.

Once developed, each action step is given a timeline, and a team member is made accountable for delivering it. Progress with the plan should be formally reviewed by the accountable partner at least monthly and discussed informally every week.

Even if you’re a sole practitioner, you must find some way of holding yourself publicly accountable for progress with the plan. Going back to our analogy with New Year’s resolutions, people trying to lose weight or quit smoking find they’re much more successful if they join a support group and make a public commitment to their plan. Having to return every week to report progress to their peers forces them to take things just a little bit more seriously than being able to rationalise and overlook progress to themselves.

Recommended Resource: The Raintoday "Best of the Decade" Lists

Raintoday.com, the online magazine for marketing & selling professional services has just published their "Best of the Decade" lists of their recommended books, websites, blogs and other resources for professional service firms.

Quick Tip: Put Things in Perspective