The 3 Biggest Mistakes When Creating A Business Strategy
I have been working in strategy for 22 years.
Since starting as an IT management associate and working my way up to head of an eCommerce organization, I have learned a lot about what it takes to solve some of the biggest problems people face in growing profitable CPG brands online.
In fact, they are a lot easier to solve than most people think. You just need to change how you're thinking about them.
Here are the 3 biggest mistakes when creating a business strategy and how to solve them:
Mistake #1: Creating goals from the top down.
We've all watched Shark Tank and heard the doomed line:
"If I could just get 1% of {insert some market here} to buy my product, then we could make {Insert 9-figure amount} dollars, sell the company, and be millionaires."
I love the ambition in this vision, but it's not grounded in any reality.
For example, if I could sell my hand-crafted scones to 1% of the people in the US, it would be windfall for my business. But that's a huge jump from where I'm at today, which is selling my tasty scones from my home kitchen.
It's also probably unrealistic.
How to solve it:
Set your 2024 strategy based on how you are operating today, and what you believe is achievable in the next 12 months - without a fairy godmother.
These questions can help to guide you:
What were my 2023 net sales?
How many customers did I sell to?
What was my average order value (AOV)?
What is my current organic reach (email list, social following, etc.)?
Get to know your numbers.
Benchmark them against other businesses in the same product category.
Then, set your 2024 growth strategy.
Mistake #2: Not making room for the new.
The people who work for you are dreading your bright ideas for new strategies.
Why? Because for most employees, new strategies just mean more work. CEOs and Founders have brilliant new ideas and then fail to reduce existing workload or to adequately plan for new resources and investments. This leaves the rest of us with more work to do.
Piling on work for yourself or your team is not sustainable or wise for long-term employee retention (or self-preservation).
How to solve it:
Once you have your 2024 strategic priorities, set them aside and review every existing process already at work in your business.
Consider:
What daily effort does it take for your team to keep selling existing products?
What other projects are in progress but have not yet completed?
What quality of life do you want for yourself? For your employees?
Are you experiencing work/life harmony right now, or are there imbalances?
Before you add a new strategy or initiative, determine what activities you will start, stop, and continue to free up time and resources for you and the team to pursue the new strategy with full focus.
Once you have this plan, share it with stakeholders and collaborators and get buy-in.
Mistake #3: Try to accomplish everything all at once.
You have your strategic priorities, you've cleared the team's workload, so now it's go time, right?
Maybe. maybe not.
We humans overestimate what we can do in the short term and underestimate what we can accomplish in the long-term.
Does everything have to start right now? Or could you start one initiative now, and start another at the beginning of Q3 in July? Would you work more efficiently if you waited to get more data, or monitor for market shifts?
Launching all the initiative things all at once is a surefire way to drive yourself and your team to burnout.
How to solve it:
Achieving success has a lot to do with timing and momentum.
Set yourself up for success.
Make a 12-month calendar and plan out your year.
Things to include on your calendar:
Non-negotiable events: holidays (retail and personal), birthdays, anniversaries
Hero events: Product launches, >1-week vacations, etc.
Hub events: Promotions, trade shows and conventions, short getaways, etc.
Help events: Content and tech upgrades, weekly date nights, etc.
Once you have your calendar, evaluate your strategic initiatives and where you can reasonably plan project work around openings in your calendar. Spread out projects to launch in Q2, Q3, even Q4.
Again, share the plan with stakeholders and collaborators and get buy-in.
See? That wasn't so hard.
What pitfalls have you seen in strategic planning?
When it comes to start/stop/continue and calendar planning, are you comfortable negotiating buy-in with stakeholders?
I'm working on new content ideas to help us all tighten our negotiating skills and would love to know if this would be valuable to you. Hit reply and let me know!