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Optimal Way to Get There
A
strategic plan should focus on the organization’s
critical success factors, i.e., the elements
that will enable the firm to head where
you want it to. “Most people know
where they are going. The problem is how
to get there.”
What are you really hoping to
do?
Manage a decline in growth?
Launch a new product?
Explore new markets?
Reinforce your product’s image?
Improve your profitability?
Increase or maintain your market shares?
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Using
the information gathered at the reflection stage,
you now have to set realistic, measurable, time-limited
objectives. If any objective does not present
these three attributes, you will be unable to
evaluate whether you have reached it or not, and
it will not serve to improve your strategy
Established
for a one-year period, the marketing plan
is the best tool to help you meet your business’s
marketing challenges. This management instrument
will enable you to:
obtain and entertain a clearer vision and
tighter control over activities to carry
out in order to attain your annual sales
objectives;
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make sure that your firm’s products and
services tie in exactly with your current and
potential clients’ true needs and expectations;
provide your sales, marketing, production and
financial services personnel with a coherent work
plan focused on results to attain;
plan your initiatives and projects so as to eliminate
bottlenecks in their implementation;
avoid last-minute precipitations, especially in
preparing trade shows and exhibitions, developing
advertising documents, carrying out advertising
campaigns, etc.;
raise all your personnel’s awareness of
just how important the client can be;
ensure that your business’s strategic planning
will be carried out and implemented systematically
and consistently;
concentrate your sales representatives’
efforts on objectives pertaining to active client
retention and potential client canvassing;
exercise tighter control over all your marketing
activities’ costs: product development,
market survey, advertising and promotion program,
and sales expenses.
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