Planning for a successful 2021

As this dreadful year draws to a close, we're all starting to put our plans in place for 2021. And no doubt those plans are going to be more positive and ambitious than this year. So in this episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast, I want to talk all about planning for 2021 and exactly what a robust plan looks like. And I want to share with you five tips that I use with my paying clients to make sure that your plan stays alive, is relevant and is delivered. So let's get on with today's episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast. Accelerate your agency's profitable growth with tools, tips and value added interviews with your host agency owner and coach, Rob DeCosta. I think we can all agree that 2020 has been a pretty miserable year for some so many reasons and in so many ways. And we could never have predicted at the beginning of of the year when we working out our plans for our agencies, exactly how it's going to pan out. But I guess if one thing it's taught us is that when you create a plan, which we all absolutely have to have, whether you're a freelancer or a larger agency, but when you're creating a plan, you need to make sure that plan is dynamic and it reflects today what you didn't know yesterday. And that's one of the crucial things that I want to talk about today. So I'm recording this episode in mid December 2020, and I hope, like me, you're starting to put your plans together for 2021, or you may have already even completed that. And it finally feels good to have a roadmap out of the virus and a sense of actually being in control again of our own destiny. Now, when you're creating a plan, of course it has to be much more than a finance plan or a staffing plan. It's interesting that often I will ask prospects if they have a plan and they will say yes. But when they share it with me, it looks like having the numbers and having a sense of what size their organization will be in order to deliver those numbers. But your plan needs to be looking at way more than just that. So let me just start off by talking about some of the areas that should be included in your plan. So as I said, the plan needs to be much more than just a finance plan. But of course you do need to include financial figures in your plan and you do also need to talk about people. So as you grow your business, what people do you need in place to serve a business of that size? And then of course, you also need to look at your marketing strategy, your new business and sales strategy. You need to think about what clients that you want to win, what type of client. You also want to think about what market you're tackling, what your product or service is. And finally, you need to think about systems and processes to underpin all of this. Most agencies grow in an organic way and usually see those business curves that just look like a sort of gentle incline. But the reality is that as any business grows, we actually grow in a stepped way. So the horizontal part of that step is putting the foundational systems and processes in place in order to create the growth, and then you put the next horizontal layer of infrastructure in place in order to create the growth. Now a high risk company would have very big horizontal platforms and a lower risk company, which is most of ours, are going to have these smaller steps. So you just constantly need to be thinking about the infrastructure piece and that starts to look at people, systems and processes, the type of client you and your pricing and all of that kind of stuff. If you want to grow in a kind of consistent and as pain free a manner as possible. None of us want to be sort of busting at the seams, desperately need more people, so we hire more people and then we've got all this spare capacity and we start in cash flow issues and so on and so on. So if you want to avoid that, you have to have a plan and you have to have a sense of how much infrastructure you put in place before you start trying to grow. I've likened it many times in the past having a cup that you fill up and then as you get to sort of 80% of that cup being full, you need to get the next cup and then you need to really focus on filling that cup. So that's what capacity in your team looks like. So you just need to make sure that your plan covers all of those areas. So finance, marketing, new business and sales people, clients, market, product and systems and processes. And a business plan needs to be holistic. I know that's a bit of a cliched word to use, but it does really need to look at all aspects of your agency so that you can make sure that you grow in this kind of controlled and sustained way. Now, if all of that makes it sound like your business plan needs to be complex, well, it absolutely doesn't. When I'm doing business planning work with my clients, we can often get it completed in two sessions. So you definitely don't want to over complicate this. And you do want to take a keep it simple strategy. So let me share with you now five tips that I think are really crucial to create a living plan that actually gets delivered. So my first tip is to get your senior team, if you have one, to support you in the development and the delivery of this plan. You, you definitely don't have to create a plan on your own and you definitely shouldn't be the only person to deliver that plan because if you do have a team and you don't share the plan and you don't get others to help deliver it, then there's a really good chance that the plan will fail. Because fundamentally you need to get everybody on the same journey with you and you need to have everybody excited about the destination. I always talk about a plan like a journey. So let's imagine that the destination is the south of France and you have everybody really excited about getting, getting there. So that's the vision for the year. Then we need to think about the strategy which is how are you going to get there? So that's looking like taking a boat and driving and taking a train and so on. And then your detailed plan is exactly what train you're going to take, where you're going to stop to sleep and all that kind of stuff. So that's how I always liken it. And of course you need to get your whole team excited about going to the south of France because if someone has more interest in going to Bognor, then you're going to have a hard time delivering the plan. Now if you don't have a team, my advice is to get some help to create your plan because it's really difficult doing this on your own. Although of course it's possible. So by getting help I mean you obviously can get a coach, but I just mean having an ally who can give you some objective support and some objective input. So that's my first tip, which is get your senior team to support you in the development and delivery of this plan. Tip number two is that you need to break your one year objectives into quarterly goals. And then those quarterly goals need to be broken down into a detailed monthly plan. And when I talk about a monthly plan, it's almost like talking about a to do list for your business. So what are the things that you're going to focus on when you allocate time in your diary to work on the plan? And as I said, so the one year objective might be the south of France. The quarterly goals are the fact that we're going to take a ferry, then we're going to take a train, then we're going to pick up a car and drive the last part. And then the monthly detailed plan talks about which bit of that journey are you going to complete this month and what is the detail of it. So that's number two. Break the plan from yearly objectives to quarterly goals to a monthly detailed plan. Tip number three is that each part of your plan, that's your yearly plan, your quarterly plan, or your monthly plan should have no more than seven goals or seven projects that you work on at any one time. And really important here, 7 is the magic number or less, because you don't have the bandwidth to focus on more than seven working on your agency type activities. So it might actually only be two or three, but it can't be more than seven. So if you ever have more than seven, you just want to be kind of deciding which are your top seven priorities. And the eighth one can be waiting in the wings. So that's tip three. Make sure that each part of your plan never has more than seven goals or seven projects. Tip number four is related to tip three, which is set yourself the challenge of never carrying a task over from one period to the next. So you never want to think, oh, this month we only got three of those seven projects started, so the other four are just going to get carried over. You really never want that to happen. So what you want to be doing is asking yourself when you're setting these projects or these goals, where will I be by the end of this period with this particular task? So for example, where will I be by the end of this month with this particular task? And then that end goal should be the objective for the month. And of course you want to make sure that these objectives are smart objectives so that you can measure them. So that's my fourth tip, which is set yourself the challenge of never carrying a task over from one month or one quarter to the next. And then my fifth tip is to make sure that you are reviewing your plan at least once a month and you are amending the plan based on what you know today that you didn't know yesterday. Because if this year's taught us anything, it's that our plans must be dynamic and never cast in stone. And if you ask me why is what's the main reason why so many plans fail, I would tell you it's because people do a lot of work on them in an intense period of time. Then they cast them in stone and they set them aside and then they look at them not often enough and of course, the world has changed dramatically, but their plan has stayed the same. So my fifth tip is to review your plan every month and amend it based on what you know today that you didn't know yesterday. And when you're looking at your monthly plan after that meeting, everyone needs to take the actions and put them in their diaries so that they can be sure that when they reconvene the following month that they have achieved those tasks. And of course, if you are big enough that you have some kind of management team, then the monthly plan should be the basis for your management meetings and they keep you in that strategic space as opposed to getting sucked down into operational discussions about client a or employee Fred or whatever. So you want to make sure that you use the plan as the basis for your monthly management meetings and then once every quarter you take the quarterly plan and you use your management meeting to break that down into the next three months of plans. I hope that makes sense. I'm saying the word plan a lot here, but I hope that makes sense. That's my fifth tip, which is to review your plan at least once a month and amend it based on what you know today that you didn't know yesterday. Now, of course, what underpins all of the delivery of a an exciting plan for 2021 is going to be having a really robust business development strategy in place. That means you are constantly bringing in ideal target customers into your agency that will help you deliver your growth targets. And I just want to spend a couple of moments now telling you about my brand new business development masterclass and invite you to register and come along to one of our sessions. So in this 60 minute, action packed practical training, we cover why you can no longer rely on referrals and word of mouth to bring in that number of new clients that you aim to get in 2021. We talk about the importance of niching your agency and how to confidently establish your niche. And you'll know I'm a massive fan of niching and I've spoken about that many times on the podcast. Then we're going to talk about the importance of being aligned across four key areas of your agency. And this has created loads of debate in the sess sessions that I've run so far. So that's being aligned across market, service, price and product. Then I'm going to share with you two key business development strategies that will deliver new business in the midterm. And then if you're really desperate for business, then I'm going to share one key strategy that you can implement in the short term to start delivering you some business. And then of course, what underpins all of this is the ability to nurture people that come into your world and be able to convert those people into customers. And I'm also going to share with attendees some exclusive tools and templates that are usually only reserved for my paying clients, but you'll be able to grab them for free by showing up to the masterclass. So head over to training.dacostacoaching.co.uk sales masterclass. That's training.dacostacoaching dot co.uk sales masterclass and I will put a link in the show notes as well. This is a really important topic because as I say, what underpins the delivery of any successful business plan is going to be the ability to bring in a consistent pipeline of ideal target customers. And I've captured a lot of what I know and a lot of what I share with my private paying clients into this one hour masterclass. So please head over, register for the class and I will see you on the inside. Okay, I also want to share with you my free ebook called Creating a Scalable and Sustainable Agency and this has some other tips besides what I've shared with you today about how you can scale your agency and make it less dependent on you. So I will put a link to that in the show notes. Okay, so it doesn't matter if you're a freelancer, a small agency with a couple of staff, or a growing agency with 15 to 20 staff with we all need a plan so that we have control of the trajectory of our growth rather than being at the mercy of external factors. And as I said earlier, if anything, 2020 and the coronavirus pandemic has taught us it's that we need to have a plan that is dynamic and can reflect what we know today that we didn't know yesterday. And so I'd really encourage you to start creating your plan using some of the tips that I've outlined in this podcast today to cover all of the areas of how your agency is going to grow in a sustainable, profitable and enjoyable way in 2021. I hope that we're all going to have a much more balanced year of not just all work and no play, and that we can all feel like we're in control of our destiny again. And having a plan is a great way to start that. So that's it from me today in this short episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast. Thank you. Hope you found it useful as ever. Please share the podcast far and wide. Please consider leaving a review, especially on Apple Podcasts, and please make sure that you've hit the subscribe button as well. Other than that, I hope you have a fantastic Thursday, a brilliant rest of the week, and a relaxing weekend, and I will see you next week for the next episode of the Agency Accelerator podcast. Sam.