Planning | Teik Oh

How Strategic Planning Can Save You From Being A Gibbering Wreck!

Jan 14 2020

When you start a new year, often you feel excitement tinged with a scent of anxiety.

We are brought up to anticipate something new and exciting every new year. It doesn’t matter if it’s the new calendar year, or a new financial year, or an anniversary, or a new school year. We remember our childhood when each new season held something new for us to look forward to, something hoped for but perhaps unpredictable. That’s why we often spend the new year making up resolutions and goals or making up new plans. The new year unfolds ahead of us and it represents a new start so anything seems possible.

Yet we also sometimes feel anxiety, a little concern about how the year will actually unfold. This is a trained response because as we grow older and more experienced, we remember things that have not gone so well before; we remember resolutions and goals that fell by the wayside: “Can I really do it this year?”

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Plan On A Page

Jan 24 2017

It’s late January – are you still keeping track of your New Year’s Resolutions?

Making resolutions is great. Making resolution sets goals, and if you are clear about your goals they become possible. But in order to make those goals real, you need plans. Once you have plans, you need to work on them – every day!

It’s the same for your business. Set your goals, make your plans – then, how do you keep them front of mind before you get lost in all the little things you have to do?

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Plan With An Eye To The Outside

Nov 29 2016

When you wrote your last business plan, did you go on a “retreat”?

That’s what most people do – they clear out some time and take their team out of the workplace so they won’t be disturbed, and they spend a couple of days discussing what’s going on in the business and how to improve it and set goals and strategies.

But here’s what’s wrong with this approach – more often than not you discuss and find solutions for problems and opportunities from inside your business, and forget that it’s external stimuli that will have serious and unpredictable effects.

So you go along and implement your plan only to have, one day —– WHAM! A big problem from outside hits you where you weren’t expecting.

Watch this week as I discuss how to plan with an eye to external factors.

Let’s summarise – use PESTLE to analyse and think about the external factors that could have an impact on your plans:

P for Political, being any political changes in your region that could have an impact;

E for Economic, requiring you to look at the local, national and global economy;

S for Social, asking what social trends are happening right now that could affect your business;

T for Technological – what is happening in and outside your industry that is affected by tech changes, social media and so on;

L for Legal, looking for potential changes to the law that could impact your industry;

E for Environmental, including the environment as well as surrounding factors – can any development here affect you?

If you want more of these free tips, tools and resources to help you grow your business, click here and sign up to get them sent directly to your inbox every week.

And while you’re there, go to teikoh.com and see what other great ideas you’ve missed.

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Marketing Plans – Why and How?

Nov 08 2016

Do you need a Marketing Plan?

You run a small business, surely not? I mean, you’re not Amazon, but customers come in don’t they? They find you, and sometimes they even refer their friends to you. Sales are ticking along smoothly, why would you need a marketing plan?

Well, let me ask you: could you improve your sales?

When you started your business, what was your dream? Is your business shaping up that way now?

If you are honest, most of you would say that in your “dream” your business was running a little better than in reality, right? Let’s face it, how many of us “dreamt” of being middle of the road?

Yes, you do need a marketing plan or you are just cruising. If you don’t market, you’ll end up floating with the tide, not going where you want but going where it takes you. Is that the way to grow your business?

A marketing plan need not be this expensive, consultant-led exercise that you don’t understand. Why don’t you use your knowledge of your own business to design a targeted set of marketing activities that will reach out to your ideal customers?

Here’s how –

Here are the seven easy steps again:-

Get to really know your product or service from the viewpoint of your customer. What are the benefits that it gives your customer? What needs does it fulfil?
Get to know your ideal customer. Where do they come from? What’s their profile? Why do they need your product? What are their personal traits and emotional triggers?
Set up your whole business, not just your product, to meet the customers’ expectations. How do they like to receive your product? What happens after sale? What responsiveness must you have? Do they like the experience gift-wrapped or just off the shelf?
Utilise the right pricing strategy – make money, but set your price so that it attracts the customer. Should it be priced as a luxury category or a cheap one? Do you price for the unique experience or to compete?
Choose the appropriate marketing activities. Are they appropriate for the stage of the sales funnel you are pitching at? Are they appropriate for your market and the characteristics of that market?
Schedule the campaign. Build your marketing activities so that they reinforce each other, not some random set of happenings.
Put it together, and while doing so, make yourself accountable with inbuilt monitoring and measurement systems.

If you want to know more, click here to read about my SMART Marketing Planning system.

And don’t forget, get over to the website and post a comment on your experiences in marketing your business. While you’re there, subscribe and I’ll make sure that you get more free tips, ideas and tools to grow your business sent to you every week.

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Back To Front Planning

Sep 20 2016

How do you plan for something? Created some goals right? Identified what you wanted to achieve this year or in 5 years’ time, then worked out strategies on how to get there?

Well, how do you know if those goals and strategies will get you to a place you really desire and not just some random point on the way there? Where even is “there”?

Stephen Covey said it best: “Begin with the end in mind.” I believe that you always have to start your planning from the back end, from where you want to end up, and then go back to where you are now. Otherwise, how can you create goals and strategies to go “forward” when you’re not clear where “forward” actually is?

And I don’t mean some wild and wooly “vision and mission” statement – I mean a clear, quantified, specifically described, ideal future situation. You absolutely need clarity on this before you plan for anything, so that you can ask “Will this goal or strategy or action get me nearer there and only there?”

Watch this video on the one way I recommend to clarify what your “vision” is and what it actually means when it has been achieved.

If you use this method you can cascade the detailing of what your ultimate dream business is, all the way to the detailed steps and actions you need to take – try it out! Remember:-

The first question is “what do I mean by my ideal…..(business)?”
Then keep asking “what do I mean by…..”

If you’ve missed out on any of my free advice, tips, ideas, systems and step by step processes to grow and build your dream of a business, go to teikoh.com and check them all out there.

By the way, if you are missing out, it probably means that you aren’t on my members’ list. It’s free to join and if you’re on it I send you every week, free and valuable updates on all these great tools and systems. Click here to sign up, and be aware that I hate spam so I will never sell or give your details to anyone else!

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Increase your sales through a highly focused marketing plan!

SMART Marketing: In this book, the owners of a small business are led through the SMART Marketing 7 Step Process to produce a marketing plan targeted at their most desirable customers. Any business can use these principles and in 4 to 6 weeks implement a plan to get them through the door! Find out how...

The SMART Marketing Workbook: Companion to “SMART Marketing”, this workbook sets out the SMART Marketing process in 7 workshops for you and your staff to complete questionnaires and templates that at the end, form the marketing plan you need to sell your REAL product to your REAL customer! View now...

Tag - Planning

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How Strategic Planning Can Save You From Being A Gibbering Wreck!

Plan On A Page

Plan With An Eye To The Outside

Marketing Plans – Why and How?

Back To Front Planning