Finalizing & Executing Your Plan for 2010
By Charlie Alter
article courtesy of allbusiness.com

This is the sixth and final article focused on market diversification strategies & selected tools for manufacturers to use to achieve profitable growth. This series has included the following topics:

1.  Why Now is the Time to Diversify Markets & Customers
2.  The Customer Analysis
3.  Using Demand Innovation to Find New Growth
4.  Finding New Customers in New Markets
5.  Integrating Marketing & Sales Efforts

 

Now is the time to put it all together and finalize your plan for 2010. The emphasis should be on successfully executing your plan, otherwise what's the point in developing a plan in the first place. Don't let this one fade away perhaps like some in the past, focus on successful execution from the beginning.

Gather Your Team
The first step in finalizing your plan for 2010 is to include all of the key people in your company who will be expected to execute it. If you are inclusive in the planning process the results will be much more robust and you will be well down the road to gaining critical buy-in within your company.

Here's an agenda for your first session to finalize your plan:
  Confirm the commitment to diversify into new markets and find new customers. Does everyone
    understand why this is a priority?
  Review which customers the team considers to be your most valuable customers (MVCs) and which
    products or services are the most profitable.
  Determine the key actions with your MVCs to probe for their problems that you can solve.
  Review your best products & services, what needs to be done to improve them?
  ID "adjacent" markets similar to the ones you already serve.
  Clarify the value proposition that your company offers its customers: What's in it for them to do
    business with your company? Why do they care? Why should they believe your new pitch?

From past experience, this planning session will take at least a half-day and may require two or more sessions. It also may be useful to hire a facilitator to help manage the process. In any event, these agenda items will get you and your team to the point of identifying key priorities.

Identify Key Priorities
The next step to finalize your plan is to identify the key priorities that you and your team believe are the most critical ones to address in 2010. These priorities should be kept to a short list, six or less if possible. It may be necessary to roll together several priorities to reduce the number to six or less. But you will be in a much better position to generate the initiatives or action plans to accomplish them if you work hard to identify the most important priorities.

Examples of priorities from recent projects include:
  Generate profitable new sales with 3-4 Most Valuable Customers by visiting each to find problems
    that we can help solve. Read article #3, Using Demand Innovation to Find New Growth, to understand
    more about this approach.
  Integrate marketing & sales activities so that each group supports profitable sales in existing and
    new markets. Read article #5, Integrating Marketing & Sales Efforts, to understand this strategy.
  Identify 2-4 new market segments and develop a Go-to-Market Plan for each one with clear tasks,
    timelines and responsibilities. Read article #4, Finding New Customers in New Markets, to understand
    how to do this.
  Evaluate and improve or adapt your best products for expansion into 2-4 new market segments.
  Revisit our company's Value Proposition and understand what the Benefit Promise is for existing and
    new customers.
  ID support and resources needed by marketing, sales and production to grow profitable sales in 2010.

Translate Priorities into Initiatives
Now that your team has identified the short list of key priorities for 2010, the next step is to clearly describe these in terms of an action plan or initiatives to accomplish. This step is typically the trickiest and the most important one to accomplish. It's tricky because accountability is being assigned and everyone knows they will be evaluated on their respective success.

This is where teamwork is critical. It's much better to assign these responsibilities to small teams of people from different parts of the company rather than to one individual. Why? Because you need employees working together from the beginning of a market diversification project, so their success can be leveraged in the future. Lone ranger strategies rarely work and I recommend to avoid them.

List to following when translating a priority into an initiative:
  Overall objective
  Tasks and subtasks
  Timelines
  Resources: Time, People & Cash
  Responsibilities: Team Leader, Team Members

Finalize into an A3 Plan Format
One of the best ways to complete any plan is to boil it down into an A3 Plan. The process called A3 Planning was developed internally by Toyota over the last 30+ years, A3 simply refers to the size of a sheet of paper roughly 11" x 17". The goal of A3 Planning is to put all relevant facts regarding a plan on one piece of paper and be able to tell the story about the plan as quickly and succinctly as possible. I've done this on a small letter size 8.5" x 11" paper for smaller projects or broken the sections up into two letter size documents that when combined produce an A3 size document.

There are several reasons I recommend using the A3 Plan format:
  The A3 plan is heavy on the Planning part of Dr. W. Edwards Deming's Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA);
  A3 plans are developed by teams not by individuals;
  They foster and improve communication up and down and across an organization;
  The "Catch Ball" process ensures that plans are not developed in a vacuum and have the support of
    all people affected by the plan, formalized by having everyone sign the plan;
  The A3 plan can serve very well to monitor progress of the plan as it unfolds and can be used to
    capture any changes in the plan; and
  Toyota uses the A3 planning process to develop people into problem-solvers and as a mentoring tool.

With these suggestions you and your company team should be able to get a good start in developing a Market Diversification Plan for 2010. However, this will be a difficult and time consuming process and you may need help. One great source for help and support is CONNSTEP, your state's Manufacturing Extension Partnership program.

Good luck in your efforts! Please feel free to contact CONNSTEP with any questions or feedback.