Strategic plans follow many different forms, but most strategic plans have some common elements. The first is a mission and vision statement. A mission statement describes what you do, for who, and how. A vision is an aspirational statement of where you want your unit to be in the future, usually, in a three to five-year timeframe. It should be bold and inspirational. A vision and mission statement can also be combined into the same statement. Here is an example from the Walt Disney Company. "The mission of the Walt Disney Company is to be one of the world's leading producers and providers of entertainment and information. Using our portfolio of brands to differentiate our content, services, and consumer products, we seek to develop the most creative, innovative, and profitable entertainment experiences and related products in the world." The next element is a SWOT analysis. SWOT is an acronym that stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. A SWOT analysis is an organized list of your businesses' greatest strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Strengths and weaknesses are internal to the company, things like your reputation, patents, your location. You can change them over time, but not without some amount of work. Opportunities and threats on the other hand, are external, and include things like suppliers, competitors, prices. These things are out there in the market, happening whether you like it or not, and you can't change them. You can only react to them. Businesses use a SWOT analysis as part of their planning process. There is no one-size-fits-all plan for your businesses, and thinking about your business in terms of its unique SWOTs is a good place to start. As a general guideline, opportunities and threats are often the source of the objectives or goals of an organization. So, be sure to spend time thinking about these things. So, speaking of objectives or goals, probably, these are the most important part of a strategic plan. Objectives angles turns your mission and vision into measurable targets. Objectives and goals are the concrete outcome statements that give focus to a firm's activities. Goals and objectives must be clear, realistic, and sufficiently detailed. Strategy and tactics. Now, strategies and tactics explain how you plan to achieve the strategic plan goals. Tactics are much more concrete, and involves specific action plans, resources, and practices to fulfill the objectives and goals. The next section is measurement. Often, these are called key performance indicators, or known as KPIs. KPIs are the milepost or the measurement metrics, used to gauge progress towards achieving objectives and goals. To meet the challenges in their industries, companies need to be farsighted and visionary, and must develop long-term strategies. Strategic planning involves developing a strategy to meet competition, and ensure long-term survival and growth. The sales function plays an important part in this process, typically, as part of the strategy and tactics of the strategic plan. In particular, in situations where you have expensive and complicated products with relatively few buyers, personal sales is a very effective tactic. Often, the focus of salesforce activities in particular, which products to promote for which buyers, comes from the strategic plan of the firm. So, before you begin to plan your sales activities, you need to familiarize yourself with the strategic plan. The goals and strategies of the strategic plan influence the sales management plan. In situations where I've been called into a company and asked to help develop a sales plan, the first thing that I asked for is the strategic plan. There's been a few times where they didn't have a strategic plan, and that's a huge red light to make. That tells me that a company really doesn't know where they want to go, and how would you expect me to help them to develop a sales plan to achieve that? So, always, always, always begin with a strategic plan.
