SERVICE · STRATEGY, SALES & PROFITABILITY

Strategy, Sales & Profitability

A complete strategic plan built to be run — with the sales and profitability disciplines that make it actually happen.

THE PROBLEM

Most SME strategy sits in a document nobody looks at.

Strategy in an SME usually fails one of two ways. Either there’s no strategic plan at all — the business runs on the owner’s instinct and reacts to the loudest problem — or there’s a plan that was written for a board meeting two years ago and hasn’t been referred to since. In both cases the effect is the same: management time gets spent on the wrong activities, sales and profitability drift, and good opportunities go unnoticed because there’s no framework to spot them.

WHAT'S INVOLVED

A complete strategic plan you can actually run the business from.

The work builds from Johnson and Scholes’ definition of strategy — the direction and scope of an organisation over the long term, which achieves advantage through the configuration of resources within a challenging environment to meet stakeholder expectations. In practice that means answering six questions: where is the business going (3–5 year direction), which markets should you compete in, how you’ll win in those markets, what resources you’ll need, what external forces you’re navigating, and what your key stakeholders expect. The strategic plan then works back to a 12-month business plan, then a 6-month and 90-day activity plan. The plan is a working document, not a shelf artefact.

WHAT TO EXPECT

A team that can answer "what business are we in, and what business should we be in?"

The value shows up in two ways. First, day-to-day management effort concentrates on the most productive and profitable activities — waste falls out. Second, when the next opportunity or threat appears, there’s a framework to assess it against instead of a gut call. Applied well, a strategic plan focused on worthwhile goals is where the biggest step-changes in business value come from.

WHO IT'S FOR

Strategy, Sales & Profitability is for:

→ Owners running the business without a written strategic plan.
→ SMEs whose current plan is out of date or was never really operationalised.
→ Businesses at an inflection point — new market, new competition, generational change.
→ Leadership teams needing alignment on "what business are we in?" before the next hire or investment.