9 Sustainable Business Practices You Should Incorporate
Today’s consumers are demanding products and services that do not damage the environment. As a result, corporations are dealing with an unprecedented and complex brew
So you have had your business for a number of years and you are successful for all intents and purposes. You have an excellent product, you have an active client base that purchases from you regularly. You know how and where to get new clients and how to keep the ones that you have. Your team is pretty stable; you have a low turnover rate.
Question is: what is next?
Well, that is not necessarily an easy question to be able to answer. While many businesses might take a gut-check approach, this is similar to the spaghetti marketing approach, wherein you try a bunch of things and see what sticks. It isn’t very efficient and you are likely to have more successes than failures. This probably isn’t the best approach.
Following the market has limited shelf life and often narrow profitability. You could attempt to do the same thing, but do it better, but without a full understanding of your costs, market expectations and what they are willing to pay – how they ascribe value, you may find that you are once again barking up the wrong tree.
Some companies try franchising and licensing. Others simply open additional locations or expand some other type of way. While these are certainly ways to grow, they all require significant investment in time and research in order to do them correctly. Even if you simply increase your company’s capacity – the ability to produce more goods or services, or expand your reach and visibility through various business development techniques, without an understanding and a plan for how to respond to changes as they occur will put your company at risk.
The value in strategic planning is multi-faceted. While it may simply seem like a simple theoretical exercise, going through the process forces business leaders to look and think differently about their business and how it exists in the marketplace.
A company, not too long ago, was invited to begin the strategic planning process. While the process was underway, the leadership scoffed at it and decided to keep doing what they were doing. They expanded quickly to meet marketplace demand, hiring staff and making other investments.
Suddenly, they ran into trouble with delivering their offerings to their clients and maintaining client satisfaction. Clients began leaving faster than new clients were being brought in. The resulted in reduced revenue and reduced personal income for the leadership team. The leadership team began making last-ditch efforts to go out and get no business but had never developed a process nor the tools to do so, so finding new clients became increasingly difficult.
Worse, yet, they found that they had been allocating too many resources to their projects, over-promising and under-charging their clients, resulting in poor cash flow.
Had they walked through the strategic planning process, these items would have been addressed ahead of time and the leadership wouldn’t have been reeling as a result of the changes that occurred. Furthermore, perhaps they wouldn’t have lost or under-charged their clients. For them, the value of strategic planning would have been immeasurable and they would be a far larger company.
If your interest is in building or maintaining an extraordinary company, consider investing in strategic planning at your company.
Rick Meekins is the Managing Consultant at Aepiphanni, the trusted advisor for business leaders who are seeking forward-thinking solutions to help them plan for and navigate through the challenges of business growth. Our entrepreneurial multidisciplinary team works with clients to develop differentiating solutions and provide direction focused on lasting, strategic results. We exist to help our clients CREATE | DESIGN | BUILD extraordinary businesses.
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