No matter how large or small or how new or established you are with your business, you need a plan to work with. Call it a play-book, a road map, a blue print; call it what ever you want but make sure you have one. I’m developing a go-to-market strategy for openStudy, a new technology start-up i’m working with and here’s an outline i’ll be using for a day strategy session.

Shut your team away  in a room for a day with a white board, flip chart (plus those post-it style sticky sheets) and a pile of bagels. Plaster the walls with all your ideas. Try to stay on time (see below). Ideally, it’s good to have an outsider to act as facilitator.

1. Situation Analysis (30 minutes) - why are you in business? What’s the gap in the market and the market opportunity that makes all this work for you?
2. SWOT (30 minutes)- create 4 quadrants, one each for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. List 5 in each quadrant.
3. Positioning statements (15 minutes) - “we ARE the following” ; “we are NOT the following”. Do not get sucked into the “naming” vortex or get hung up on word smithing, you can do that another day. Gag any trouble makers.
4. High Level Goals (30 minutes) - use what you’ve created in 1 , 2 & 3 to create 5 top level goals about your business e.g. “we will get 1 million users of our product within 12 months”
5. Strategies (3 hours) – This is the “How you are going to do it” section. A strategy is a group of techniques and actions with a goal in mind. See below for the different type of strategies you should address.
6. Plans & Timings (60 mins) – What’s the nitty gritty of what’s going to happen and when are things going to happen. Like a to-do list for each strategy.
7. Wrap Up  (30 minutes) – make sure the bagels are finished and address any follow up items. Volunteer someone to right up all of this good stuff in a document so that  you can actually use it. Take digital pictures of each chart you have on the wall. They are great to come back to – either when you’ve made millions and you can tell everyone “hey we did have a plan” or something to throw darts at when you’ve burned through all your cash and mortgaged the cat.

Here’s a break down of the strategies. You can have multiple under each – please please keep them simple and easy to remember so people can relate to them. Give them a catchy name. They are just meant to be strategy statements

• Product Strategies – address why people will want to use your product / have a strategy for user experience or for uniqueness.
• Distribution Strategies – what’s your route to market –  partnerships, grass roots, direct, indirect etc.
• Pricing Strategies – how are you going to make a profit? Good section for the soul.
• Launch Strategy – what’s going to happen in the first 6 months to get people buying / using your product? See my previous blog for some case studies by the likes of Facebook, Youtube etc.
• Promotion Strategy – how do you get your product out there? 92% of people purchase because of  good Word of Mouth (WOM). How are you going to create it?
• Participation Strategy – this is one of the new “P’s of marketing”. How do you engage your customer? Maria talks about all this is her blog which may be worth a gander.

Good luck. Let me know how you do.