You're ready to grow, but how are you going to go about it? While some businesses simply hope growth follows success, a growth plan is the best way to plan and successfully execute business growth. Use this outline to start forming a growth plan for your business.
Start With a Mission
The first step in writing a growth plan is already done: your mission. However you plan to grow, keeping in line with your company mission is essential and that mission should be featured in the growth plan to link how you expect to grow within that framework.
Create SMART Goals
Creating an effective growth plan requires SMART goals. SMART goals are those that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timed. Each goal should go through the SMART process to ensure that you are attempting to achieve reasonable goals with recognizable outcomes using a pre-determined metric, such as a key performance indicator (KPI).
Set a Timeline
The entire context of a growth plan hinges on when it will be achieved. A growth plan needs a clear understanding of when goals will be met and what indicators will commemorate meeting those goals. While the timeline may be dynamic during implementation, include a forecast timeline that outlines each phase of the growth plan and how it will be measured as complete.
Know Your Competition
The market and your competition play a big part in the implementation and success of your own growth plan. A solid growth plan includes a thorough analysis of your competition, the market and how you plan to set yourself apart from those factors.
Outline Your Marketing Plan
A growth plan is impossible without customers, and your growth plan should include a section that outlines how and who you plan to target through a marketing plan. Growth requires customers and those customers need to receive your message. An effective growth plan includes a marketing plan to attract and retain clientele.
Plan Your Finances
Unless you've found a way to grow without capital, you need to consider where the money will come from for growth. Whether its angel investors or additional sales, a solid growth plan needs to have a financial breakdown of what funds will be needed and how they will be obtained to achieve your SMART goals. To further strengthen your plan, setting monetary needs to KPIs can help the business determine when more funds are required.
…And People
You don't just need money to achieve your growth plan, you need the resources in the form of people. A growth plan should include a section that addresses where additional manpower will be obtained to achieve your goals. Whether it's creating new positions or redistributing job duties, a growth plan should include which employees or contractors will need to be added to achieve your goals and how you will manage your workforce.
Write an Elevator Pitch
While you could talk about your business for hours, there aren't many people who are willing to listen. An elevator pitch is a 30-second overview of your entire growth plan and while it's not easy to create, it's vital to have. An elevator pitch perfectly summarizes your goals and how you will achieve them and can be pivotal in acquiring partners or financing. Once your growth plan is complete, use all that information to create an elevator pitch.
A great growth plan is comprehensive. While it starts off simple with your company mission, the actual plan needs to deeply delve into the specifics of how you plan to drive and monitor business growth. Use these topics to form a growth plan that is not only ambitious, but achievable.
