Strategic Planning Facilitation

Does your company need to head in a new or different direction? Are you looking for ways to grow your business in the next couple of years? If so, a new strategic plan might be just the thing you need!

Fortunately, the SBDC is now able to facilitate strategic planning retreats and processes for local businesses like yours at absolutely no cost to your company. Yes, it’s free!

Rob Alexander learned the art and science of strategic planning facilitation 14 years ago and has led dozens of organizations through customized processes. He admits that he geeks out over strategic planning and has a knack for getting other people excited about the process too.

The process he uses is fast-paced, super-interactive, and designed in such a way that every single person in the room has an equal voice in the direction that their company or organization will take in the future. The end result is a lot of excitement, buy-in, and, of course, really smart strategies.

Half-day Retreat

$0.00
  • The SBDC will facilitate a 4-hour strategic planning session for you and your team.
  • Customer Profile Module
  • Mission, Vision, and Core Values Module
  • SWOT Analysis Module
  • TOWS Analysis Module
  • Goals Module
  • Objectives & KPIs Module
  • Strategies Module
  • Tactics Module
  • Monitoring Systems Module

Full-day Retreat

$0.00
  • The SBDC will facilitate an 8-hour strategic planning session for you and your team.
  • Customer Profile Module
  • Mission, Vision, and Core Values Module
  • SWOT Analysis Module
  • TOWS Analysis Module
  • Goals Module
  • Objectives & KPIs Module
  • Strategies Module
  • Tactics Module
  • Monitoring Systems Module

Multi-day Planning Process

$0.00
  • The SBDC will facilitate a series of 2-3 hour strategic planning sessions for you and your team (3-6 meetings).
  • Customer Profile Module
  • Mission, Vision, and Core Values Module
  • SWOT Analysis Module
  • TOWS Analysis Module
  • Goals Module
  • Objectives & KPIs Module
  • Strategies Module
  • Tactics Module
  • Monitoring Systems Module

We don’t just wing it!

Prior to gathering your team together to begin crafting a new strategic plan, we like to analyze your internal operations as well as the environment you’re competing in. This way, you have a full and clear picture of where you stand before you ever set pen to paper. Data = good.

Internal Analyses

Staff or Board Member Surveys or Interviews

We will work with you to design a customized research tool to gain useful insight from your staff members and/or board members. Then, we will administer the tool as an outside party and summarize the key findings in such a way that it is useful as the strategic plan begins to take shape.

Customer or Stakeholder Surveys

Similar to staff/board member surveys above, we will design and implement a tool to understand the customer experience and obtain critical feedback about how the public perceives your company. The results will be summarized for the planners to use while they debate the strategic direction of the company or organization.

Impact Data and Trends

The SBDC will work hand-in-hand with the business owner to pull out and display key data points and trends that accurately depict the current situation. What this data might be will vary widely from one company to another depending on the industry and their data collection practices.

External Analyses

PEST Analysis

A PEST analysis is a scan of the external macro-environment in which your organization exists. It is a useful tool for understanding the political, economic, socio-cultural and technological environment that your company operates in. PEST factors can be classified as opportunities or threats in a SWOT analysis, which makes it useful to complete a PEST analysis before completing a SWOT analysis.

Porter’s Five Forces

We would use Porter’s Five Forces as a simple framework for assessing and evaluating the competitive strength and position of your company. This is useful both in understanding the strength of your company’s current competitive position, and the strength of a position that you might be looking to move into. Strategic analysts often use Porter’s five forces to understand whether new products or services are potentially profitable.

Four Corners Analysis

The four corner’s analysis is a useful tool for analyzing your competitors. By examining your competition’s future goals, current strategy, assumptions, and capabilities, you can begin to predict how your competitors may respond to a given situation.

“I was surprised at how engaged our board members were in the strategic planning process, and I would attribute most of that to the great number of ways that Rob uses to make sure that everyone has a voice and is heard. There seems to be a new level of excitement and commitment around where our organization is heading in the future!”

Lydia Hess, Executive Director of the Champaign County Chamber of Commerce and Visitor’s Bureau

It all starts with you reaching out to say you’re interested.

Complete the form to let us know that you’d like to learn more about how the SBDC can help your company or organization develop a new strategic plan and schedule an initial meeting to begin discussing options.

Get started!