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8 Steps to Crafting an Effective & Flexible Annual Plan

8 Steps to Crafting an Effective & Flexible Annual Plan
Danielle Sabrina "Crypto Queen"
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Brand & Media Strategist

Brand & Media Strategist
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Business owners have to be forward-thinking. And while most entrepreneurs have lofty goals for their company's future, it's not uncommon for them to get lost in the realm of the hypothetical. Especially in a rapidly changing and often unpredictable market, it can be hard to nail down a concrete annual plan. As a result, many business owners find themselves playing a constant game of catch-up, scrambling to meet their quarterly goals.

That's where business development consultants like Jody Sutter come in. Sutter, who spoke at Hubspot's recent INBOUND event, is a strong believer in the power of businesses being proactive in their plans rather than simply being reactive to whatever happens to be the latest market trend. As such, she's identified eight crucial elements to crafting an effective and flexible annual plan.

  1. Study the market. Business owners should constantly be on the lookout for trends, considering how those trends will impact their particular industry. For instance, the world of advertising and marketing is trending away from long-term contracts in favor of short-term project work. A good annual plan should take into consideration how these kinds of trend will affect the development of their business.

  • Analyze your performance. How are you competing, and who is your competition? At what point on the sales funnel do you succeed, and at what point do you falter? Business owners need to focus on where they excel, and find solutions for those areas where they fall short.

  • Set your financial goals and benchmarks. Suppose you're making $2M annually in revenue. If your goal is to grow by 20%, you have to make $2.4M. But this doesn't mean that you simply need to make an extra $400K in revenue. Your yearly goals have to take into account organic growth and client attrition, paying attention to staff changes and at-risk clients that can affect your revenue for better or worse.

  • Create actionable steps for achieving your goals. Continuing from the above example, suppose you're striving for 20% growth, and your client attrition rate is 20%. This means you'll need to make an extra $800K in revenue. Your annual plan should address, precisely, how you'll go about doing this. Are you pitching the right number of clients? The right sized clients?

  • Play to your team's strengths. Businesses nowadays are more diverse than ever; many are one-person operations, whereas others have large teams with several different departments. But in any case, you should capitalize on your team's strengths. If you have natural salespeople, focus on prospecting and outreach. If you have excellent writers, create written content that will be appealing to your target customers and be sure to post it consistently.

  • Create a scalable PR & marketing plan. There are so many facets and intricacies in PR and marketing that it's easy to get overwhelmed. The key, however, is to go deep rather than broad. For instance, don't create a weekly newsletter just for the sake of pushing out content. Rather, create a viable strategy behind the newsletter, with specific goals. It's better to create high-quality content once a month than dime-a-dozen content every week.

  • Nail down your operations. How are you managing your prospects? How are you gathering intelligence about them? Which CRM are you using to communicate with them? And how are you communicating internally with your colleagues? Ensuring streamlined communication -- both internally and externally -- is a crucial element for any annual plan.

  • Finish up with an executive summary. Your executive summary should be on the first page of your annual plan -- but it should be written last. This is your opportunity to make sure your management team understands the most important points of the plan.

    • The fact that the marketplace is unpredictable doesn't meant that you can't create effective long-term plans. In fact, as Sutter has seen, doing so actually makes it easier to adjust tactics in the face of unanticipated events. By being clear about what your goals are and how you can go about achieving them, you can start turning your lofty visions for your business' future into reality.

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