. Strategic Planning
. . Marketing Plan
. . . Succession Plan

Affordable Growth for Small Business

Term

Definition

Best Practices

Best practice is a management idea which asserts that there is a technique, method, process, activity, incentive or reward that is more effective at delivering a particular outcome than any other technique, method, process, etc. The idea is that with proper processes, checks, and testing, a desired outcome can be delivered with fewer problems and unforeseen complications. Best practices can also be defined as the most efficient (least amount of effort) and effective (best results) way of accomplishing a task, based on repeatable procedures that have proven themselves over time for large numbers of people.

Blog or Web Log

A blog (a portmanteau of web log) is a website where entries are written in chronological order and displayed in reverse chronological order. "blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), music (mp3 blog), or audio (podcasting), and are part of a wider network of social media.

Branding

A brand is a name, logo, slogan, and/or design scheme associated with a product or service. Brand recognition and other reactions are created by the use of the product or service and through the influence of advertising, design, and media commentary. A brand is a symbolic embodiment of all the information connected to the product and serves to create associations and expectations around it. A brand often includes a logo, fonts, color schemes, symbols, and sound, which may be developed to represent implicit values, ideas, and even personality.

Brands, "branding" and brand equity have become increasingly important components of culture and the economy, now being described as "cultural accessories and personal philosophies".

Business Plan

A business plan is a formal statement of a set of business goals, the reasons why they are believed attainable, and the plan for reaching those goals. It may also contain background information about the organization or team attempting to reach those goals.

Business plans may also be internally or externally focused. Externally focused plans target goals that are important to external stakeholders, particularly financial stakeholders. They typically have detailed information about the organization or team attempting to reach the goals. In the case of for-profit entities, external stakeholders would include investors and customers.

Internally focused business plans target intermediate goals required to reach the external goals. They may cover the development of a new product, a new service, a new it system, a restructuring of finance, the refurbishing of a factory or a restructuring of the organization.

An internal business plan will often be developed in conjunction with a balanced scorecard or a list of critical success factors. This allows success of the plan to be measured using non-financial measures. Business plans that identify and target internal goals, but provide only general guidance on how they will be met are called strategic plans.

Business Strategy

Business strategy. A business strategy is made up of carefully crafted words making up templates, which in turn act as filters through which all planning, tactics and decisions are passed through before implementation.

Collaborative

Collaboration is a process defined by the recursive interaction of knowledge and mutual learning between two or more people who are working together, in an intellectual endeavor, toward a common goal which is typically creative in nature. Collaboration does not necessarily require leadership and can even bring better results through decentralization and egalitarianism.

Competitive Analysis

The term competitive analysis is also used in marketing to describe the process a company or individual uses to assess competition. The following is a representative sample of the types of questions that should be answered in order to effectively analyze the competition: "questions such as "who are your competitors? What customer needs and preferences are you competing to meet? What are the similarities and differences between their products/services and yours? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each of their products and services? How do their prices compare to yours? How are they doing overall? How do you plan to compete? Offer better quality services? Lower prices? More support? Easier access to services? How are you uniquely suited to compete with them?"

Content Management

Content management, or cm, is a set of processes and technologies that support the evolutionary life cycle of digital information. This digital information is often referred to as content or, to be precise, digital content. Digital content may take the form of text, such as documents, multimedia files, such as audio or video files, or any other file type which follows a content lifecycle which requires management.

Core Competencies

A core competency is something that a firm can do well and that meets the following three conditions specified by hamel and prahalad (1990):

1. It provides customer benefits
2. It is hard for competitors to imitate
3. It can be leveraged widely to many products and markets.

A core competency can take various forms, including technical/subject matter know how, a reliable process, and/or close relationships with customers and suppliers (mascarenhas et al. 1998). It may also include product development or culture such as employee dedication. Modern business theories suggest that most activities that are not part of a company's core competency should be outsourced.

If a core competency yields a long term advantage to the company, it is said to be a sustainable competitive advantage.

Daniel Goleman

Daniel goleman is an internationally known psychologist who lectures frequently to professional groups, business audiences, and on college campuses. Working as a science journalist, goleman reported on the brain and behavioral sciences for the new york times for many years. His 1995 book, emotional intelligence (bantam books) was on the new york times bestseller list for a year-and-a-half; with more than 5,000,000 copies in print worldwide in 30 languages it has been a best seller in many countries.

His latest book, social intelligence: the new science of human relationships, was published in september 2006. Social intelligence, the interpersonal part of emotional intelligence, can now be understood in terms of recent findings from neuroscience. Goleman’s book describes the many implications of this new science, including for altruism, parenting, love, health, learning and leadership.

DiSC

The disc classic describes behavior based on how people view themselves in their various environments.

DRP or Distribution Resource Planning

Distribution Resource Planning (DRP) is a method used in business administration for planning orders within a supply chain. DRP enables the user to set certain inventory control parameters (like a safety stock) and calculate the time-phased inventory requirements.

Ecommerce

Electronic Commerce is exactly analogous to a marketplace on the Internet. Electronic Commerce (also referred to as EC, e-commerce eCommerce or ecommerce) consists primarily of the distributing, buying, selling, marketing and servicing of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks.

Employee Profile

A three dimensional profile of an employee utilizing the strengths profiling system. The profile provides a shadow or outline of a person's personality, behavioral traits, and personal strengths, and talents.

ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning

Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERPs) integrate (or attempt to integrate) all data and processes of an organization into a unified system.

Ezines

An electronic newsletter distributed via email, web log or website utilizing an opt in subscription system.

Goals

What goals must you achieve to accomplish your objectives? These are major goals and not tasks. When you meet one or more goals you will have accomplished an objective.

Google Adsense

AdSense is an ad serving program run by Google. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image and, more recently, video advertisements on their sites. These ads are administered by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click or per-thousand-impressions basis.

Google Adwords

AdWords is Google's flagship advertising product and main source of revenue. AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads. The AdWords program includes local, national, and international distribution. Google's text advertisements are short, consisting of one title line and two content text lines.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics (GA) is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. Its main highlight is that a webmaster can optimize their AdWords advertisement and marketing campaigns through the use of GA's analysis of where the visitors came from, how long they stayed on the website and their geographical position.

Gorilla Marketing

Guerrilla marketing, as described by Jay Conrad Levinson in his popular 1984 book Guerrilla Marketing, is an unconventional way of performing promotional activities on a very low budget. Such promotions are sometimes designed so that the target audience is left unaware they have been marketed to and may therefore be a form of undercover marketing (also called stealth marketing).

Gravity Marketing

The use of marketing tactics to create a gravity of leads via gorilla marketing techniques where all marketing efforts lead to other efforts in the same marketing campaign.

Informational Web Site

A website containing information about a company entity. Contents for an informational site usually include company, product and owner information along with contact information and general terms and conditions under which the company does business.

Intellectual Property

In law, intellectual property (IP) is an umbrella term for various legal entitlements which attach to certain names, written and recorded media, and inventions. The holders of these legal entitlements may exercise various exclusive rights in relation to the subject matter of the IP. The term intellectual property reflects the idea that this subject matter is the product of the mind or the intellect. The term implies that intellectual works are analogous to physical property and is consequently a matter of some controversy.

Internet Marketing

Internet marketing is the practice of using all facets of internet advertising to generate a response from your audience. It ties together both the creative and technical aspects of the internet, including design, development, advertising and marketing. Internet Marketing methods include search engine marketing, display advertising, e-mail marketing, affiliate marketing, and interactive advertising.

Interventions, Consulting

Interventions are a set of techniques practiced in counseling to achieve a predetermined set of outcomes.

Keyword Rich Content

Text on a web page, which is rich in keywords that are predetermined to have relevance to both searches on the web and the subject matter of the web page.

Knowledge Worker

Knowledge worker, a term coined by Peter Drucker in 1959, is one who works primarily with information or one who develops and uses knowledge in the workplace.

Due to the constant industrial growth in North America and globally, there is increasing need for an academically capable workforce. In direct response to this, Knowledge Workers are now estimated to outnumber all other workers in North America by at least a four to one margin.

A Knowledge Worker's benefit to a company could be in the form of developing business intelligence, increasing the value of intellectual capital, gaining insight into customer preferences, or a variety of other important gains in knowledge that aid the business

Leadership

The discipline of knowing, doing and directing others in the right things to do.

Leadership Style

Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee, in Primal Leadership, describe six styles of leading that have different effects on the emotions of the target followers.

These are styles, not types. Any leader can use any style, and a good mix that is customized to the situation is generally the most effective approach.

Linkedin

LinkedIn is a business oriented social networking site, mainly used for professional networking. As of May 2007, it had more than 11 million registered users, spanning 150 industries and more than 400 economic regions (as classified by the service).

Litmus Test

An indicator used to classify a method or tactic as either favorable or unfavorable.

Management

The discipline of knowing, doing and directing others in how to do things right.

Market Analysis

Market analysis plays a major part in a firm's planning activities. It guides decisions on: inventory, purchase, work force expansion/contraction, facility expansion, purchases of capital equipment, promotional activities, and many other aspects of a company. Forecasts in these areas must be accurate and decision makers must understand how they were derived.

Not all managers are asked to conduct a market analysis, but all managers must make decisions using market analysis data and understand how the data was derived. So all managers need a reasonable understanding of the tools most used for making sales forecasts and analyzing markets.

To understand a market analysis, managers need a basic understanding of statistics and some knowledge of computers.

A large number of market analysis techniques are related to sales forecasting, others are more general techniques for analyzing markets. The literature defines several areas in which market analysis is important. These include: sales forecasting, market research, and marketing strategy. Sales forecasting and market analysis are complementary skills that any marketing manager should possess.

Marketing Plan

A marketing plan is a written document that details the actions necessary to achieve one or more marketing objectives. It can be for a product or service, a brand, or a product line. It can cover one year (referred to as an annual marketing plan), or cover up to 5 (sometimes referred to as five) years.

A marketing plan may be part of an overall business plan. Solid marketing strategy is the foundation of a well-written marketing plan. While a marketing plan contains a list of actions, a marketing plan without a sound strategic foundation is of little use.

Marketing Strategy

Marketing strategy as a key part of the general corporate strategy. A marketing strategy is a process that can allow an organization to concentrate its (always limited) resources on the greatest opportunities to increase sales and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.

A marketing strategy is most effective when it is an integral component of corporate strategy, defining how the organization will engage customers, prospects and competitors in the market arena for success. It is partially derived from broader corporate strategies, corporate missions, and corporate goals. They should flow from the firm's mission statement. A range of micro environmental factors also influences them.

Metrics

Metrics are a system of parameters or ways of quantitative and periodic assessment of a process that is to be measured, along with the procedures to carry out such measurement and the procedures for the interpretation of the assessment in the light of previous or comparable assessments. Metrics are usually specialized by the subject area, in which case they are valid only within a certain domain and cannot be directly benchmarked or interpreted outside it.

The following ISM3 table suggests the elements that must be known for a metric to be fully defined. This table is criticized sometimes as it omits controls against bias.

1. Element Description
2. Metric Name of the metric
3. Metric Description Description of what is measured
4. Measurement Procedure How is the metric measured
5. Measurement Frequency How often is the measurement taken
6. Thresholds Estimation How are the thresholds calculated
7. Current Thresholds Current range of values considered normal for the metric
8. Target Value Best possible value of the metric
9. Units Units of measurement

Meyers-Briggs

The Myers Briggs test describes how people approach the environment intellectually, and attitudinally, and how they process information.

Mission

How you are going to win with your strategic objective in mind.

Motive Passion or Motivating Passion

Motive factor is your motivating factor. It is what drove you into business in the first place, the defining elements of your passion for the business.

MRP or Material Requirements Planning

Material Requirements Planning (MRP) is a software based production planning and inventory control system used to manage manufacturing processes. Although it is not common nowadays, it is possible to conduct MRP by hand as well.

An MRP system is intended to simultaneously meet 3 objectives:

1. Ensure materials and products are available for production and delivery to customers.
2. Maintain the lowest possible level of inventory.
3. Plan manufacturing activities, delivery schedules and purchasing activities.

Objectives

These are created before you begin any planning. They include your personal and business objectives, what it is you want to accomplish in life, the reason you are going into or went into business.

Online Store

Online shopping is the process consumers go through to purchase products or services over the Internet. An online shop, e-shop, e-store, internet shop, webshop or online store evokes the physical analogy of buying products or services at a bricks-and-mortar retailer or in a shopping mall. It is an electronic commerce application used for business-to-business electronic commerce (B2B) or business-to-consumer electronic commerce (B2C). Online shopping is popular mainly because of its speed and ease of use. Some issues of concern can include fluctuating exchange rates for foreign currencies, local and international laws and delivery methods.

Organic Growth

Organic growth is the rate of business expansion through increasing output and sales.

Peter F. Drucker

Peter f. Drucker--writer, management consultant and university professor-- was born in vienna, austria in november 1909.  After receiving his doctorate in public and international law from frankfurt university in frankfurt, germany, he worked as an economist and journalist in london before moving to the united states in 1937.

Peter drucker published his first book, the end of economic man, in 1939.  He then joined the faculty of new york university's graduate business school as professor of management in 1950.  Since 1971, he has been clarke professor of social science and management at the claremont graduate university in claremont, california.  The university named its management school after him in 1987.

Peter drucker has written 35 books in all: 15 books deal with management, including the landmark books the practice of management and the effective executive; 16 cover society, economics, and politics; 2 are novels; and 1 is a collection of autobiographical essays.  His most recent book, managing in the next society, was published in fall 2002.

Peter drucker also served as a regular columnist for the wall street journal from 1975 to 1995 and has contributed essays and articles to numerous publications, including the harvard business review, the atlantic monthly, and the economist.  Throughout his career, he has consulted with dozens of organizations - ranging from the world's largest corporations to entrepreneurial startups and various government and nonprofit agencies.

Experts in the worlds of business and academia regard peter drucker as the founding father of the study of management.

For his accomplishments, peter drucker was awarded the presidential medal of freedom by president george w. Bush on july 9, 2002.  A documentary series about his life and work appeared on cnbc 10 times from december 24, 2002 through january 3, 2003.

PPC or Pay Per Click

Pay per click (PPC) is an advertising used on websites, advertising networks, and search engines where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser's website. Advertisers bid on keywords they believe their target market would type in the search bar when they are looking for a product or service. When a user types a keyword query matching the advertiser's keyword list, the advertiser's ad may appear on the search results page. These ads are called "sponsored links" or "sponsored ads" and appear next to, and sometimes, above the natural or organic results on the page. The advertiser pays only when the user clicks on the ad. Pay per click advertising is a search engine marketing technique.

Pricing Strategy

A strategy designed to provide guidance to the setting of pricing policy.

Process Cycles

A process development tool designed by Michael Adams. Cycles drawn in the form of the upside down Greek omega character are utilized to outline process flows. Cycles drawn within other cycles help spot processes within process, which aids in the development of subordinate process flows. The beginning and ending legs of the omega character are used to identify the common beginning and ending control points of a process. The cycle is by its nature a summarizing tool. It is also useful in identification of major steps in a process and can be created on the fly in a group setting.

Process Flows

A Process flow diagram (PFD) is a diagram commonly to indicate the general flow of processes. The PFD displays the relationship between major steps in a process and does not show minor details.

Product Strategy

A strategy developed to guide the develop the product development cycle and assure it meets company objectives.

Promotional Plan

A planning tool which identifies all the potential promotional activities, who will carry them out, the cost of startup and the monthly cost. The promotional plan also includes a forecast of unit sales which feeds the proforma income and cash flow reports used in the strategic business planning process.

Promotional Strategy

A strategy designed to guide promotional activities to assure they move forward the company’s strategic objective, strategic marketing and strategic product objectives.

Pull Marketing

See gravity marketing

Push Marketing

The use of more conventional forms of marketing and sales such as advertising, direct sales forces and conventional media and press associations.

Relative Keywords

Words that are relative to words which are being searched for on the web and are the central focus of content on a website.

Results in the Customers World

The only results that count are results that have positive impact in the customers world. Results that benefit your customers. All internal efforts which do not directly generate positive results for your customer are an expense a company can avoid if they watch for them and undergo initiatives only when results in the customers world are examined prior to the implementation of a initiatlve.

Sales Strategy

A strategy designed to assure all sales efforts are within the scope of the companies strategic objective, product strategy and promotional strategy.

SEM or Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in the search engine results pages (SERPs). According to the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization, SEM methods include: search engine optimization (or SEO), paid placement, and paid inclusion. Other sources, including the New York Times define SEM as the practice of buying paid search listings, different from SEO which seeks to obtain better free search listings.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it "ranks," the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

Strategic Business Planning

See Strategic Plan

Strategic Objective

A strategic objective is a business strategy developed to guide an organization in meeting it’s primary business objective.

Strategic Plan

A strategic plan assures you are working on the right things for the right reasons; therefore it 1) puts your business on track and keeps you on track, 2) provides a multiplication effect by multiplying the passion and vision of the entrepreneur, 3) ensures time, the dearest resource of the entrepreneur, is used wisely, 4) stops unnecessary projects, stabilizes decisions.

Strategy

A carefully crafted “dna statement” acting as a filtering system, weeding out undesired activities and providing the “code” for growth and self -repair.

A strategy is like dna, dna provides the organism with direction, dna is self-correcting in that it repairs itself. It is complex to create, governs complex processes and makes things appear simple by making things simple.

Strengths Profile

There are three tests, which together, provide a shadow or outline of a person's personality, behavioral traits, and personal strengths, and talents. Humans are much to complex to think any testing or evaluation process will uncover all there is to know about a person. It is part of our humanity, and explains the tremendous variation in people. Each test has its own purpose, and provides unique insights into how we are designed and provides valuable insights into our strengths relative to our efforts in a business.

StrengthsFinder

The strengthsfinders test evaluates what talents, (intellectual ability) and strengths, (an asset of special worth or utility) a person is gifted with. It helps us understand what we are good at instead of how we behave.

Succession Plan, Continuity Planning

In organizational development, succession planning is the process of identifying and preparing suitable employees through mentoring, training and job rotation, to replace key players — such as the chief executive officer (CEO) — within an organization as their terms expire. From the risk management aspect, provisions are made in case no suitable internal candidates are available to replace the loss of any key person. It is usual for an organization to insure the key person so that funds are available if she or he dies and these funds can be used by the business to cope with the problems before a suitable replacement is found or developed.

Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is an interdisciplinary peer mentoring methodology used to create and validate a practiced logistical plan for how an organization will recover and restore partially or completely interrupted critical function(s) within a predetermined time

Tactics

A tactic is a method employed to help achieve a certain goal. Military tactics refers to the study of actions undertaken in warfare, but due to its use describing a broad range of subjects, the term is frequently used in theoretical fields like economics, trade and games and a host of other practical fields like negotiation and navigation.

Temperament

Temperament is defined as that part of the personality which is genetically based. Along with character, and those aspects acquired through learning, the two together are said to constitute personality.

Unique Sales Proposition

The best USP’s consist of unique concepts that set your business favorably apart from the competition.

V1 – Vision

V1 - vision - making the vision strategic. In the v1 phase of the strategic planning process the foundation of the organization is discovered and developed. V1 is the identification and or development of the chief executives motivating passion, and identification of leadership styles, strengths and talents, behavioral traits and personality type.

V2 - Voice

V2 - voice - giving the vision a voice through strategic planning. V2 provides the structure of the enterprise in the form of strategy, tactics and planning built upon the foundational principles developed in the v1 vision phase.

V3 Alignment

The alignment of employees, company objectives and the strategic business plan.

V3 Strategic Business Planning

V3 strategic business planning is a systematic process designed to assist a company in the migration from a technician style operation into an entrepreneurial style operation where growth is achieved by “knowing” and “doing” the right things.

V3- Velocity

V3 - velocity – accelerating growth through the implementation of the strategic plan. The v3 phase the foundational principles developed in v1 and the strategic planning of v2 are communicated to and implemented within the rest of the organization, customers, vendors and stakeholders.

The v3 phase is all about applying velocity to the strategic business plan. Putting the strategic planning tactics to work allows you to multiply yourself, by applying each of the strategies and tactics developed in the v2 voice phase through the development and implementation of plans and then their progress through metrics developed to measure results.