A California-based business development executive with a background in finance, William Rossetter most recently served as a Corporate Development Consultant with Vision Solutions, Inc., an enterprise software company. Prior to this role, William Rossetter spent three years with UNICOM Global as the Director of Mergers & Acquisitions and Business Development. In this capacity, he oversaw the analysis and research of strategic business initiatives and business development activities.
One key activity that promotes business development within a company is strategic planning. When properly executed, strategic planning can help managers to decide where to direct their energies, evaluate priorities, streamline operations, and navigate change to effectively push a company toward its goals. An executive who wishes to engage in strategic planning should keep the following tips in mind.
1. Ask the right questions. The best way to create a strong strategic plan is to begin by developing answers to important questions. Management should discuss a company’s broader goals and examine which milestones the firm should be looking to achieve along the way in order to keep the business moving forward. Leaders should also ask themselves how the company will dominate the competition, which markets the company should work in, and which systems need to be put in place in order to realize strategic planning initiatives.
2. Communicate clearly. Leaders should avoid using unnecessary buzzwords or filler language when presenting a strategic plan to employees. The use of generic, empty terms that do not express concrete ideas usually arises when a leadership team attempts to explain a strategic plan that has not been fully developed.
3. Conduct tests before you commit. When developing a strategic plan, it can be useful for leaders to experiment with ideas before committing to a plan of action. Rather than settling for assumptions or peripheral research to guess at the outcome of a plan, leaders should implement short-term field tests to assess the viability of a strategic planning directive. This can help to determine how effective an idea would be before it becomes an official part of a company’s strategy.
