In my experience as a FocalPoint business coach working with numerous professional services firms in the Malvern, PA area, I’ve seen firsthand how difficult it can be for service business owners to step back from daily demands and craft a focused strategic plan. While smart and capable leaders, most are so heads-down delivering for clients that strategic planning falls by the wayside.
However, without clear strategic priorities and plans, service firms often plateau in growth, lose focus chasing opportunities, and make inefficient resource tradeoffs. That’s why I make it a priority as a coach to guide service companies through the strategic planning journey.
While each engagement is tailored to the client’s particular situation, I have a proven step-by-step process for strategic planning that looks something like:
Conducting an Honest Business Assessment
We begin by objectively assessing your current business across dimensions like service offerings, client segmentation, operations, finance, organization structure, and talent strategy. This evaluation reveals what’s working well worth continuing versus problems needing improvement. Activities include financial analyses, client interviews, benchmarking competitors, facilitated brainstorming, and data reviews. An accurate current state lays the foundation.
Defining Your Vision for the Future
Next, through focused discussions and visioning exercises, we define your 3-5 year vision for what success looks like. This long-term vision provides a guiding North Star for the strategy and operating plans. Your vision should be bold yet grounded in market realities. It expands possibilities for the business.
Identifying Strategic Priorities
With your future vision clarified, we determine the 3-5 strategic priorities across critical areas like service offerings, client segments, geographic expansion, operational improvements, and talent development that will drive progress toward that vision. Strategy should focus on the make-or-break priorities with highest leverage. Less is more in choosing focal points.
Setting SMART Goals
For each strategic priority, we outline measurable 3-5 year goals like “Increase market share in the greater Philadelphia region from 7% to 15% by 2025” and annual goals that ladder up. The goals need to be specific, actionable, relevant to the strategy, and time-bound. This turns priorities into tangible targets.
Building Strategic Objectives
Here we map out the concrete quarterly and annual objectives that will achieve each goal such as “Hire a Director of Sales for Philadelphia with 10+ years experience by Q2” or “Shift 20% of marketing budget into targeted Philadelphia advertising.” The objectives form the core of the strategic plan and a task list for your leadership team.
Assigning Ownership and Resources
Every objective requires an owner and plan for allocating human, financial, and other resources to completion. We want the appropriate leaders and budgets lined up to ensure objectives happen versus just being paper plans. This accountability drives execution.
Tracking and Updating the Plan
Finally, we design cadences for reviewing the plan such as monthly strategy reviews and quarterly offsites. Markets shift rapidly so strategy should be a living document that is refreshed as challenges emerge and opportunities arise. Adapting based on learnings is critical.
The end result of this structured strategic planning process is a multi-year action plan prioritizing the goals, objectives, owners, and resources required to realize your business’ full potential. With an expert FocalPoint business coach as facilitator and guide, the process leads to an energized leadership team aligned around a common growth-oriented strategy for taking your services firm to the next level. If you know your Malvern professional services firm needs a strategic roadmap to accelerate growth and progress, but lacks the time and objectivity to craft it solo, then let’s have a discussion about how my strategic planning coaching can finally provide that missing strategic focus your team craves.
