September Survival Guide

It happens every year.  No matter how hard you try to be productive and keep things moving over the summer, you eventually give into the fact that business simply slows down during July and August.  You take a vacation, your employees take vacation, and of course your customers and partners take vacations.  Project deadlines are missed, critical thinking doesn’t fully happen without all the key players involved, and decisions are postponed until the world starts up again the day after Labor Day.

And here we are! Labor Day has passed, and guess what, there are only four months left to make sure this year is a success or the best that it can be; AND to plan and budget for 2009.  Not to mention, customers and partners are back on the job and looking for status updates, deliveries and answers.

So here it is, your September Business Survival Guide to help you determine priorities for making 2008 a success while laying the groundwork for 2009.

2008 Priorities

Take no more than one or two days this week or early next week to look at the following and identify any resulting necessary actions.  Then, execute these actions quickly.  

Check the Numbers:  Review the numbers relative to plan and identify any adjustments that need to be made.  Look at revenue, expenses, profit, persistency, per unit margin, and/or other indicators that are key to your economic engine.  Is there any bleeding that needs to be stopped?  Are there expenses that are out of line and not contributing to strategic priorities?  Are there sales channels that need to be motivated, redirected or put on warning?  Are you losing business faster than expected, and if so, why?

Sales in Particular:  What does your sales pipeline look like for the remainder of the year?  What’s selling well and what can be done to devote more resources to it and sell even more of it?  It may be more productive for the success of this year to pour more resources into selling what’s hot, including redirecting non-productive sales efforts to it; than trying to fix what’s not selling.  Looking at what’s not selling and why may more appropriately belong with the longer term strategic discussions for 2009 and beyond. 

Strategic Priorities:  Are the strategic development projects on track or behind?  Are people still working on what’s most important?  

Customer Observation:  Talk to your front line staff and look at service statistics.  Are customers using your products and services as expected?  What insight can be gleaned by what customers are saying, their service inquiries and their product utilization?

Scan the Landscape:  Has anything changed in your external environment that requires a mid-course correction for this year?  Have competitors entered, exited, faltered or changed direction?  Are there any other external factors that affect demand or expenses; such as the economy, energy costs, growing consumer interest in the environment, the election, or others?

Are You All on the Same Page?  September is a good time to make sure all team members are clear on the big goal, their personal goals and how they tie together.  You need to make sure that everyone is focused and energized on what needs to be done to make 2008 a success.

How’s the Dream Team?  Are there any key vacancies and how does that impact what needs to be done this year?  Are there any employees who are inhibiting progress in any way?  While dealing with these situations takes time, it is critical for you to know in September who is contributing and who may not be.  

2009 and Beyond

That’s right.  If you know the Vann Group, you know we’re going to say it’s time to engage in your strategic planning process for 2009 and beyond.  To be effective and make significant forward progress as an organization, you must have a sound strategic plan.  To create a budget for 2009 without a plan is non-productive, because how will you know how to allocate funds, what to invest in, what the most promising strategic priorities are?

If you know the Vann Group, you’ve heard this before, and if you’ve been to our website, you know that there are several white papers to guide you in your strategic planning efforts in our Learning Center.   But what you have not yet heard is our developing thoughts on the importance of branding in the strategic planning process.  “Branding” is a hot business topic these days, and you can spend a lot of time reading books, blogs and articles about it.  Our latest white paper posted in our online Knowledge Center entitled “Is Your Brand in Your Plan?” provides a simple and pragmatic explanation of the importance of branding in strategic planning. 

If you have any questions about anything you’ve read here – or think you might benefit from the expertise of the Vann Group, please contact: