A Strategic Planning Process

Whether you are an entrepreneur embarking on a new business venture, or a business owner/manager considering changes to an existing business model, your first priority, and the beginning of your strategic planning process, is to create a vision of what you want to accomplish. According to Jack Welch, former head of GE, “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.”

Vision is best defined as being able to picture a desired end result – foreseeing exactly where you’re going, knowing how you’re going to get there, and operating in a way that takes into account the whole of the journey, not just the moment-to-moment objectives. In his new book Frontline Profit Machine, Ziad Y. Khoury states that a leader who visualizes the end result of any business endeavor as attaining peak sales performance and maximum company profit needs to consider three primary areas of actionable focus. Combined, these areas make up your strategic planning process, a revolutionary new concept known as the Khoury Performance Equation (KPE):

• Creating the Right Environment
• Ensuring the Right Personnel Fit
• Executing the Right Action

Creating the Right Environment – Step One of the Strategic Planning Process

A superior work environment that motivates employees can be the difference between a high-performing organization capable of attaining peak sales performance and maximum company profit, and one that is mired in mediocrity.

Through research and more importantly, real life experience, Khoury has identified eight core components that represent the keys to unleashing peak employee productivity. These components are essential to creating the Right Environment and should be considered when developing a new business or transforming an existing business model.

1. Development
2. Compensation
3. Communication
4. Opportunities
5. Support
6. Relationships
7. Input
8. Trust

Ensuring the Right Personnel Fit – Step Two of the Strategic Planning Process

The fastest way to achieve maximum profitability and/or improve existing sales is by selecting top producers. The following are three strategies to consider when hiring Right Fit personnel:

1. Value
Understand the profound impact your employees have on net profit
Understand the easiest performer to find and keep may just be the one who is already working for you

2. Source
Understand the larger the pool you draw from, the better your odds of finding the Right Fit
Understand the need to execute an aggressive and perpetually intense “full court press” in your search for strong candidates

3. Select
Understand the additional time spent acquiring Right Fit personnel will, in fact, save you time and make you more money
Understand the discipline required to stick to a three phase interview process

It is important to recognize that hiring and keeping Right Fit employees becomes much easier if you have the Right Environment in place. Creating the Right Environment will lead to a low rate of attrition and the need to continually hire new employees will be reduced substantially. In addition, it is far easier to attract top producers when your organization can provide a productive, positive work environment.

Creating the Right Action – Step Three of the Strategic Planning Process

The Right Environment and the Right Personnel Fit are critical to any organization. However, without the Right Action providing clear expectations and continued workplace motivation, they are largely powerless in helping you reach peak sales performance and maximum profitability.

To provide clear expectations, you will need to establish:

1. Clearly defined standards of acceptable performance
2. Effective training and the tools necessary to reach and exceed performance standards
3. Quantifiable measurement metrics

Studies, research and real life experiences show that people are motivated primarily in three ways:

1. Ego (recognition)
2. Money (compensation or incentive)
3. Fear (accountability)

Therefore, to keep your employees motivated and happy you will need to develop ways to recognize their efforts and accomplishments, a compensation plan that handsomely rewards them for achieving and exceeding the performance standards you establish, and consequences for poor or substandard performance.

No one ever said starting a business or transforming an existing business was easy. However, by creating a vision and following the Khoury Performance Equation (KPE) described in Ziad Y. Khoury’s new book Frontline Profit Machine, peak sales performance and maximum profits are sure to follow.