Export marketing plans - less is more

“Business plan” must be one of the most dreaded phrases in the corporate dictionary. Only restructuring, downsizing or bankruptcy are feared more than the annual punishment that is producing the business plan. Why do we hate them so much, and are they necessary at all?

Why do business plans cause us such pain? Maybe it is because plans are seen as so incredibly sacred – the hallowed strategic plan, asset plans, financial management plans, sales and marketing plans.

Some worry more about producing the document than what it actually means for their business. Look at local government: the Auckland City Council’s last 10 year plan was 543 pages, but does that mean their performance is substantially better than an organisation with a less comprehensive document?

It is also easy to get obsessed with the process of creating a plan. Gathering piles of data, having great brainstorming sessions on SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats), creating endless KPIs (key performance indicators) or developing clever new promotional taglines.

While gathering the necessary information is important, too much data can make it difficult for us to determine what’s really important. What we miss is thinking clearly about what our business is trying to achieve, why it exists.

Another common problem is thinking we can plan everything down to minute detail. As failed planned economies like North Korea have discovered, the world’s simply too complex. Building a business plan that will reflect your business for the next 12 months is like trying to achieve the perfect weather forecast.

Then there are those that eschew plans entirely. “I haven’t got time to plan I’m too busy selling/marketing/managing etc”. For them the annual planning process is too slow; doesn’t allow the business to react to changes; is based on linear, predictable thinking and suppresses innovation; or are simply accountants’ tools, all numbers but no reality.

Is the answer to the pain of business plans to have no plans at all? Are they important to marketing your business well?

An export marketing plan isn’t essential, but without some marketing planning you are seriously limiting your chances of success. To quote legendary United States general, and later President, Dwight Eisenhower: “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

Planning isn’t about fancy bound documents filled with buzzwords and graphs, it is primarily the act of thinking about what you want to achieve as a business. It is a process of determining how you will allocate your resources (time, money, activities etc) to achieve a desired goal. How you communicate that, whether in a document or on a table napkin, is another matter.