2018 Business Plan

2018 Business plan

Chances are you have some experience with business planning. In my own experience, business planning often is a process that is completed once per year and after a rigorous approval process, sits on a shelf and isn’t utilized in the day-to-day execution of the business.

This year’s business plan is going to be different. This template is designed to cut the fluff and focus on the key metrics that will impact your business, so that you can create an implementation strategy that will focus your efforts to create real growth for your organization.

This business plan template is designed for the design, construction and real estate industry. It is intended to be utilized at the team or studio level, meaning that your organization may have multiple business plans.

Before you get started, here are some strategies to make your time most productive as you create your business plan.

• Use Microsoft Word & Excel. When you click to fill out the tables in this Word document, you should be prompted to open an Excel document that has the formulas auto-populated. In this workbook, you only need to fill in the yellow highlighted cells.

• Use Time “Chunking.” While your vision and goals may be based on a year, you’ll want to break information into manageable sizes. This workbook breaks it into quarters, but you may even consider a single month.

• Plan with your Team. Don’t go it alone (even if you work alone). Find someone who understands your business and can act as a sounding board to you during this process. If you’re working within a team (especially if you’re a business development role), find a way to get your team to brainstorm through a workshop format.

• Set Time. Whether that’s a few chunks of time or a single chunk of time, remove distractions while you create your business plan. Consider reserving a room where you can use a whiteboard and/or projector, plus plenty of snacks.

Vision – Ambition

The vision sets the roadmap for your organization and answers this question: “What will a successful year look like?”

Your vision may be financial (profit), but also consider:

• What type of clients will we work with?
• What projects will we work on?
• What deliverables will we create?
• Who will we add to our network?
• What will our brand reflect to the outside world?
• What major issues and/or projects will we influence or impact?

Identify which of the questions above you will answer for 2018 and brainstorm, whether that’s through writing, lists or drawing.

Vision – Discernment

You’ve got to know what doesn’t work in your business strategy. Take some time to consider what didn’t work from 2017 (or previous years). In other words, what are you NOT willing to do or experience in 2018?

While you’ll be tempted to skip this question, it’s critical. Sometimes you need a gas pedal, but sometimes you need the brake (and we can forget the benefits of having both in business).

Goals

Goals allow us to get really clear about where we spend our time in order to achieve our vision.

There are three goals that you need as your North Star: Profit Goal, Pursuit Goal and Capture Goal. I’ll show you how to calculate each of these below.

1. Profit Goal. How much money do you or your organization need to make in the next year? Consider your risk/reward threshold. Is there a tier of your goal that is “non-negotiable” and a tier of your goal that is a little riskier? If you work within a team, consider at the individual level how this will break down.

Your turn.

Step 1: Declare your number!

Double click the table below to open a Microsoft Excel document to input your goals.

Step 2: Write a brief narrative about your team’s Profit Goal and who will be responsible to bring in this work.

1. Pursuit Goal. Your pursuit goal is total number of projects you need to pursue, based on your win rate during the proposal phase of a project:

To identify your pursuit goal, use this formula:

• Profit Goal / Win Rate = ____ Pursuit Goal

Example: $1.0M Profit Goal / 25% Win Rate = $4.0M Pursuit Goal

Double click the table below to open a Microsoft Excel document to input your goals.

To identify your win rate, use this formula:

• Calculate the average win rate.

1 / ___ (the average number of firms that submit) = ___ % average win rate

Example: 1 / 4 = 25% average win rate

• Calculate your win rate. (Look back on your submittals from 2017)

__ (your wins) / __ (average number of firms that submit)

Are you above or below average? ______

Double click the table below to open a Microsoft Excel document to calculate your win rate.

• A good win rate varies significantly, but target 50%+ in the AEC industry.
• If you participate in separate qualification and proposal phases, use separate formulas to determine how you perform at each of the phases.

Your turn. Do you need to focus on improving your win rate? PS: Win rates are the single greatest thing you can do to improve the impact of your overall positioning and capture plan.

1. Capture Goal. Your capture goal is the energy and/or time required to meet your pursuit goal. It can be difficult to quantify and takes some time to perfect, but you use this goal to determine how much effort required to get to the pursuit phase. This is where you’ll balance the expectations placed on the individuals responsible for business development with the business strategy.

Note: This piece of the goal setting puzzle can reveal something you hadn’t intended and requires you to rethink the amount of time you have in a day – and the way you are spending that time.

To determine your capture goal, ask yourself the following questions:

1. On average, how much profit does a typical project bring in for your team? This is your bread and butter assignments. What the market approaches you to do (which may not be aligned with your ideal client).
2. $______average profit per project.
3. $______(Quarterly Pursuit Goal) / $______(Average profit per project) = ______# of Projects to “Capture” each Quarter.
4. On average, how many meetings does your team need with a qualified pursuit to result in a project pursuit? ____ meetings. Consider that as you enter into more challenging goals, you may need more meetings to get to the pursuit stage.
5. ______(# of projects) x ______(# of meetings) = ______total capture effort.
6. Consider if this makes sense for you to think about it: monthly, quarterly, annually?

Capture Goal (Annual) = _____ # of Meetings

Capture Goal (Quarterly) = _____ # of Meetings

Double click the table below to open a Microsoft Excel document to input your goals.

Your turn. Look at your calendar from the last month. Will you meet your “capture” goal with meetings designed to talk about projects? What do you need to change about your schedule or process to get there?

Summary

Double click the table below to open a Microsoft Excel document to auto-calculate your summary table.

Implementation

“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” – Thomas Edison

At the end of the day, your profit goal is directly related to your ability to meet with clients that will hire you to work on projects. While your efforts are more effective when you improve your strategy at each phase of the client development cycle, the bottom line is this:

If you’re engaging with real clients at the rate of your capture goal where your services solve the project challenges better than your competitors, you will meet your profit goal.

Conversely, if you don’t engage with clients or your solutions don’t align with their challenges, you won’t meet your profit goal.

So do this:

Write down the number of meetings required each week to meet your capture goal, which meets your pursuit goal, which meets your profit goal and create a system that will hold you accountable.

One strategy to accomplish this is to pre-populate your calendar with placeholder “capture” meetings. It is your job to fill up these meetings with your target audience, where you are talking about their project and their challenges. Each week, hold yourself accountable to scheduling, preparing, conducting and following up on these meetings.

Personally, I have a template that I’ve created for each week that balances my energy and time across the various requirements.

Sample calendar:

Note: My personal goal is two capture conversations per week, which are identified as “Project Conversations” on my calendar.

Trofka Communication Arts 2018 Business PlanNov 7, 2017