Strategy - What might come up?

Jun 5

Part 2/4

So you’ve set your strategy’s timeline and answered a few questions, what next?

When I was building out my own strategy, the next thing I thought of was “how do I make that happen”. It’s a logical first thought but we need to take a step back from that and get a bit more context.

This is when we ask “what might come up?”.

We’re asking that question in the context of these earlier questions:

Where do you want your business to go?
What will it look like when you get there?

The Questions

The questions that you’re asking for this phase of building your strategy should look something along the lines of:

What might come up on the way to getting my business where I want it to go?
What might have an impact on what my business looks like when it gets there?

The Answers

The answers to those questions might look a little bit like:

A competitor enters the market
A competitor leaves the market
You put on a workshop that generates more leads than you expected
A supplier increases their costs unexpectedly
Provincial or Federal government policy or legislation changes
You gain a new certification
An opportunity comes up to piggyback your business onto a growing trend in your industry
A staff member goes on parental leave or resigns

Still somewhat fresh and definitely impactful to the journey a lot of businesses went on over the last 6+ years, you might even want to add “Global Pandemic” to your list of answers.

Sorting the answers

When you’re identifying the answers to your “what might come up?” questions, it’s important for the evolution of your strategy to bucket them as either opportunities or threats/ challenges to your business.

Opportunities

A competitor leaves the market

Workshop delivery generates more leads than expected

Provincial or Federal government policy/ legislative change

New certifications

New trend in my industry

Threats/ Challenges

A competitor enters the market

Supplier increases costs unexpectedly

Provincial or Federal government policy/ legislative change

Staff long-term leave/ resignation

What am I going to do about it?

There isn’t much point in asking “what might come up?” If we don’t follow that up with “what am I going to do about it?”.

This is where questions start turning into strategy.

If a competitor leaves the market, what are you going to do about it?
If a supplier increases their costs unexpectedly, what are you going to do about it?

Answering those questions might look a bit like this:

If a competitor leaves the market, what am I going to do about it?

Attract their customers to my business, targeting an X% increase in revenue in the 12 months following their closure.
- Advertising
- Networking
- …
Speak to the owner of that business, are they open to referrals, purchasing their client list, …

If a supplier increases their costs unexpectedly, what am I going to do about it?

Ensure that my business doesn’t solely rely on a single supplier for critical elements I require to deliver my product/ service
Keep an eye on global markets for any indications that suppliers may increase costs suddenly
Purchase materials for my jobs as soon as my clients pay their deposit to lock in today’s material pricing and mitigate the risk of prices of those materials increasing
…

The impact

The impact of answering these questions is clarity.

Clarity not only on what might come up, but what you need to have in place so that you can respond effectively if and when those things do come up.

That allows your business to take advantage of opportunities and mitigate the impact of threat/ challenges along the way to getting your business where you want it to be.

From here, we can move into …