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Simple Strategic Planning for the Independent Retailer

Written by: Jerry Pinney

Article Overview: Strategic planning guides a retail organization towards those goals that will provide the stakeholders with the results that will encourage continued investment in the organization. The plan becomes the roadmap for the ongoing growth of the organization. An effective strategic planning process is a key management tool for insuring a vital, growing organization. As the planning process becomes part of the day to day activities of an organization, the results will become the fuel to maintain and improve the planning process.

Simple Strategic Planning for the Independent Retailer

Simple Strategic Planning for the Independent Retailer


Strategic planning guides a retail organization towards those goals that will provide the stakeholders with the results that will encourage continued investment in the organization. The plan becomes the roadmap for the ongoing growth of the organization. An effective strategic planning process is a key management tool for insuring a vital, growing organization. The most important factor to remember is the realization that Planning is a process, not a project. As the planning process becomes part of the day to day activities of an organization, the results will become the fuel to maintain and improve the planning process.

The following are few simple hints that will help you get started and easily maintain the process over time. There are five key elements to an effective Strategic Planning Process. The five elements are:

1. Evaluation
2. Opportunities
3. Objectives
4. Strategies
5. Control

The first step to getting started is to put five divider tabs into a three ring binder. The five tabs should labeled Evaluation, Opportunities, Objectives, Strategies and Control.

To begin the process, on a sheet of paper behind the Evaluation tab, list all the key things that you need to manage in order to have a successful business. Here are a few ideas:

Accounting
Advertising
Marketing
Meat Department
Produce Department
Supplier Relationships
Sales
Human Resources
Community Relations
Customer Relations
Training

You get the idea. Make your own list. The next step is to evaluate each of these key areas. Use your own system of evaluation and be very honest. I suggest that you ask all the Department heads in your organization to do the same thing. In effect you are creating your own store report card. It could be as simple as grading each area on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being poor and 10 being the ideal. Writing a statement or two on the good points of each area and a statement or two on those things that need to be improved is another way to evaluate each area. You now have the Evaluation section completed.

Next is the Opportunity section. This is the where the fun begins. Basically we want to ask the question, If I could do anything with my business, what would it be? Please don’t limit these dreams. In order to plan you need to get out of the box and be creative. Write down your dreams and wishes. Again, you want to ask some of your department heads and/or advisors to participate and submit ideas on how you can grow your business. I suggest that you take each area that has been evaluated in the previous section and make some notes on how you would like each area to be improved. An effective approach is to ask yourself, if each area were a 10, how would it be different than it is now? You now have the Opportunity section completed.

At this point you have evaluated where you are and you have dreamed about where you would like your business to be. The next step is to set some specific objectives. Objectives are written statements of measurable results to be achieved. An objective needs to be a clear statement about what you want to happen, rather than a statement of how you are going to accomplish a goal. An effective objective will be action oriented and will be a stimulus and guide to establishing the strategy. The better the objective is written, the easier it is to develop the strategy. An example of an objective would be, “Develop a training program by December 31 that will provide a minimum of 10 hours per quarter of effective training for each associate.” You will probably have 2 – 3 objectives written for each area that you have been evaluated. This completes the Objective section.

You are now ready for the next step, to develop the strategies to accomplish each objective. The purpose of the Strategy Section is to take each objective from the prior section and generally state how the objective will be achieved. This is simply a “to do” list of everything that needs to be done to achieve each objective. With a list of strategies completed for each objective the Strategy section is completed.

The final section of our plan is the Control section. This section contains all the things that you need to control and monitor your plan’s progress. Included will be the Profit and Loss statement, the Balance Sheet, Action plans for each objective and Position Descriptions for all key employees

In order to make your strategic plan a management tool and to be certain that planning becomes a process and not just a project, there needs to be a regular review of progress. This review should include all key people in the organization and should take place at least once a quarter.

As you can see each of the five steps feeds the next step. The planning cycle is really just that a cycle, that keeps on going. The control section feeds the evaluation section, which feeds the opportunity section and so on.

Many organizations find that there needs to be one person who is responsible for the planning process. This can be a senior executive or sometimes it can be an outside consultant that monitors the process and insures that everyone involved is part of each quarterly review. A neutral third party can be a real asset to the entire planning process.

The old adage, “Plan your work and work your plan” certainly applies to the planning process. It is easy to get started and once you do you will see planning will help focus your activities on those things are important to the market share growth and expansion of your business.

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Article Tags: advertising marketing, community relations, customer relations, divider tabs, evaluation opportunities, five elements, human resources community, independent retailer, key areas, key management, management tool, meat department, produce department, retail organization, ring binder, roadmap, stakeholders, strategic planning process, successful business, supplier relationships



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