As part of the reverse engineering process, you’re going to identify “bite-sized pieces” or benchmarks of what’s going to happen at each interval so that you know
The key to this part of the strategic plan is to take into consideration your resources of time, energy, money and people. You can only accomplish what your resources will allow you to accomplish.
For example: If one of your outcomes is to hire an ISA (Inside Sales Agent), but if you have neither the money nor the production and lead sources to put an ISA effectively to work, then you need to plan for it accordingly and work towards it.
The great thing about reverse engineering is that since you know what your outcomes are along the way, you know what you need to achieve before you can move on to your next initiative.
Quarterly priorities
This is where the rubber meets the road.
One of the biggest questions we get from agents is: “What should I be working on right now?”. And, if you take that question into consideration of accomplishing near- and long-term goals, it’s super important to be working on the right things in the right order.
The way we determine what the right thing to do — and in what order to do it — is to create quarterly priorities that tie into the next benchmarks on the plan.
For instance, if I need more money in my business to buy more leads, then my quarterly priorities would be centered around that, i.e, collecting an admin fee, collecting marketing support from vendors, increasing your average commission per deal, etc.
Once you’ve implemented those strategies and have achieved your results, you create new quarterly priorities that guide your activities to get you to the next level.
There are other elements of the strategic plan that tie into what I’ve discussed here, but these are the main building blocks of a successful, long-term plan.
It's not a business plan
Don't confuse a strategic plan with a
business plan, which is a much b
roader plan that includes your strategic plan as well as marketing, financial and operational plans.
To say it another way, a business plan is much more of an aspirational document, covering what your business is about and why it has value in the market. The strategic plan, conversely, contains an action plan with specific objectives and due dates as well as setting out who is responsible for what
.
If you’ve never done a strategic plan before, it’s never too late to do one.
You can click
here to get a copy of ours.
If you want to accomplish great things in your business and do it faster, better and cheaper, then you need a strategic plan in place. It will take you some time to complete, but it’s the best compass for your business’ destination...whatever that is for you.