In our recent report, “The 7 Success Secrets of Market Leaders,” we identified 7 characteristics exhibited by market leaders. Knowing how you compare to these best practices will help you grow your business.
The second characteristic that all market leaders share is:
THEY PLAN FOR SUCCESS
In order to be successful, you have to have a plan to execute against. All Market Leaders have a vision for the year and action plans that outline their key initiatives and define the steps required to achieve their goals.
For example, “developing my team” is a common action plan amongst market leaders. Building a support team is critical in being able to identify, pursue, and ultimately close more deals.
This planning gives them a lighthouse to pursue and reinforces their daily passion for the business.
It is important to note that Action Plans are not the same as Business Plans. A commercial real estate business plan is crafted at the creation of the entity, and updated every year thereafter – or more commonly – put in a drawer and never looked at again. Conversely, an Action Plan is a living, breathing, dynamic plan that provides market leaders clarity of how to achieve their CRE goals.
Market Leaders create action plans that address major business initiatives and dive deep into every asset of achieving their plan.
7 key elements to every action plan
1) Challenges
What are the challenges to achieving a specific business initiative? By identifying these challenges, you can set a specific plan of attack.
2) Actions
What actions are necessary to address each challenge? By outlining each action, you are defining a path to overcoming these challenges and moving your business forward.
3) Results
What is the ideal result of each challenge-based action? Setting a clear vision for where you will be once the challenge is overcome, and how you will benefit will assist you to stay on course.
4) Resources Needed
What other resources or capital is required? By identifying the resources necessary to achieve your goals, there will be no surprises nor excuses.
5) People Needed
Who will they need to complete the actions? There is no room or rationale for “I can’t do it” syndrome. With the actions defined and the results visualized, you will leverage many, if not most, of the required action steps.
6) Cost
What is the cost for each line item? Knowing the financial requirement to reach your goals will give you clarity for the return on your investment, and further push you to stay disciplined and move forward.
7) Specific Date or Recurring Frequency
What are the possible deadlines or frequency of putting an idea into action? By setting metrics and deadlines, you will easily be able to track your progress. And as you witness your own progress, staying on course to your goal achievement will become easier.
By applying this approach to their goals, market leaders have clarity of purpose, a vision for success, and a ‘M.A.P.’ for reference. We respectively refer to these as Massimo Action Plans.
These action plans afford you a blueprint to track all that needs to be done daily, weekly, and monthly, and that provides a measuring stick for success. But that’s a topic for next week.
Step #2 to being a market leader is planning for your success. Download the other Success Secrets of Market Leaders below:
At the Massimo Group we have worked with our market leader clients in creating 1,000s of Massimo Action Plans, or M.A.P.S., to help them significantly propel their business. If you would like to speak with someone at The Massimo Group about how we can work with you to build your plan for greater success, contact us today.
