We help you understand where your business is at – and create Strategic Plans to move it forward.
Business consultation and business planning sessions are for business owners or leaders who want to know more about their Business Health Check results, help with their Strategic Plan, or for anyone looking to trial our services before making a longer commitment.
Either way, we’re always happy to help another Australian small to medium sized business.
Please choose from Business Health Consultation or Strategic Plan options.
If you are unsure, please contact us or book a meeting.
This consultation is completed after your Business Health Check assessment and builds on the scores and ratings in your Report. We’ll get to know your business and challenges better, and then provide advice and guidance to help you resolve your issues, or take advantage of your opportunities.
Business planning sessions use a combination of pre-work assignments and workshops with both of our Co-Founders and Principals.
We’ll help you confirm your business’s Purpose, Values and Goals. We will then analyse the current Strengths, Opportunities, Weaknesses and Threats (‘SOWaT’) of your business. Finally, we will help you to select, schedule, assign and set measurable targets for the Strategic Actions required to achieve your business’s Goals.
You’ll receive a concise Strategic Plan that captures all of the above. You’ll also receive a 12 month schedule of the Strategic Actions that you and your people need to take to achieve your business’s Goals, while staying true to its Purpose and Values.
After that you’re free to implement the Strategic Plan yourself, or you can request continued support through our range of Advisory Services programs.
Jon King describes his experience going through the Strategic Planning process, and how he has greater clarity on strategic priorities to grow his business. Please contact us below to find out more about our business planning sessions.
Book a CallWe’re always happy to explain more about our Strategic Plans and Business Consultations, and how they will help your business to sustainably grow and become more profitable and valuable.
Many clients find through their Business Health Checks that their existing Strategic Plans are no longer fit for purpose, so they would benefit from an update at the very least.
Our Strategic Plan clients have told us that our approach is very comprehensive and efficient and leaves them with the clarity and confidence to implement their prioritised actions. Where possible, we do incorporate any existing plans that our clients have into that process, to speed up the work and capitalise on previous investments.
In simple terms, a “business plan” shows what a business will do to become commercially feasible, eg how it will make money – that’s why lenders and investors often ask start up businesses for them, before committing funding.
For that reason, Business Plans have to include a lot of “tactical” information, eg around detailed pricing, specific business processes, individual risks, etc.
Once a business is up and running, Business Plans tend to be filed away, and business owners and leaders focus mostly on “working in” the business. Which is where Strategic Plans come in – they are the best tools to help business owners and leaders elevate their thinking back to the strategic level, from time to time.
For that reason, Strategic Plans should deliberately ignore most tactical issues, and focus on the actions that will strategically drive and improve business tactics, from the top down.
We’ve seen a lot of strategic plans over the years, and frankly most of them are too complex and cost too much, in terms of both time and (frequently) consulting fees. They usually try to do too much, use too much jargon and leave business owners and leaders deflated rather than inspired.
We have instead distilled the best practices that we have seen over the past 25 or so years, to come up with a simple, accessible model that efficiently takes business owners directly from their Purpose and Goals through the Strengths, Opportunities, Weaknesses and Threats of their businesses to a Critical Path of practical and prioritised Actions for the next 12 months.
And we also think that our Strategic Plans are highly affordable for small to medium sized businesses, who need these projects to pay for themselves quickly.
Clarity and confidence, in the simplest terms.
You will be clear on what you need to do, to strategically drive all of your business forward, because we use our Six Pillars Strategic Framework to ensure that all of your material business risks and opportunities are considered and prioritised. You will also be clear on what you can leave, because you can’t do everything at once.
You will also be confident that you can do what you need to do to make your business more successful, because we will challenge you to focus on the practical issues, and also suggest solutions that we know work.
We want our clients to do as much of their Strategic Plans as they can themselves, eg through the prework that we give them to complete. But we know from our experience that every business owner and leader needs someone who is independent to challenge their thinking along the way, to help them see opportunities and risks that they have lost sight of, or never imagined.
Our clients also say that they value the recommendations that we bring, based on our experience of running complex businesses and working with other clients. Its true to say that virtually every business problem has already happened to someone else, so it makes sense to tap into our experience of how those problems have also been solved by someone else, rather than trying to “reinvent the wheel” yourself.
When our clients purchase an Accelerate Advisory Services program that includes a Strategic Plan we are able to cover our project management and “Critical Path” consultation time across the full program – so those clients who are prepared to make that investment in growing their business get even more value for money.
