So now you’ve got your business plan, it’s structured and it’s detailed and a great reflection of your company and your growth aspirations. It may even span the next few years. It’s your business strategy on paper and now’s the time to put it into action!
To do this we need to break it down into bite-size actions. It’s all about goal setting. Not just writing lists of things to do, but really specific goals which will be achievable by a fixed deadline.
This is a 3 step guide to activating your strategic plan in a focussed and structured way to ensure you get the results you need for your business growth.
1. Be specific
Very specific. When you write a goal you need to really visualise what it looks like and write down all the finest of details about it. Let’s say you want to launch a new website. It’s not enough just to state that. You need to really cross the t’s and dot the i’s, leave nothing out and write the goal in a way that any other person could read your goal and be in no doubt whatsoever about what you mean.
For example : “Launch my new website on domain actioncoach.co.uk. The site will be secure, with full security certification for the confidence of my clients. It will be fast so the browsing experience is first class. The site architecture will be structured to be readable by search engines and will offer my audience an easily navigable journey to find what they are looking for. It will be fully optimised with appealing calls to action throughout to convert sales at the rate detailed in my Lead Generation strategy.”
2. Make them measurable
So now you know what your goals looks like, you need to be clear how you’re going to know when you’ve achieved it. Making a goal measurable is committing it to a numerical performance, so you can see for a fact that it has done the job and it was worthwhile. In the case of our new website launch, we’ve already referenced some performance measures such as the speed and browsing experience, so let’s make these truly measurable. For example, “the website will load in under 1 second on desktop and mobile browsers when connected to a 4G network and the bounce rate will be between 25-40%. The visitor to lead conversion rate will be 5%”.
3. Fix a deadline
Already this one goal of launching a new website is really taking shape, and now’s the time to build in some accountability for when you will complete it – it’s time to commitment to a deadline. Remember to be realistic whilst staying true to your strategy timelines. “The website architecture will be complete and approved by 31st December. The content will be optimised by 31st January. Following sign-off the launch date will be 1st February with 4 weeks allowed for authority and snags, and performance tracking to commence on 1st March”.
Taking these steps to break down your strategic plan into bite-size actions will give you a manageable and achievable plan. Goal setting can be short, medium and long term and the same principles apply. Just remember to be specific about what you want to do, give yourself a way to track how you’re doing and make sure you commit to to a deadline.
