Strategic Planning Services

Whether you are launching a new business, or looking to get yours to the next level, Tenato provides consulting to guide you through market research, strategic planning, seeking financial support, and even launching - with a full range of marketing support services.

Our Approach to Strategic Planning

We always begin by getting to know you, and what work you have may have already accomplished on developing your own strategic plan. This helps us to identify the areas where you may need our help, so we’re not re-treading the same ground. We then proceed to gather the research so that we can help you make quality decisions.

The steps we typically follow here are:

Reading and providing feedback on existing drafts or past plans, documents, research
Interviewing or survey prospects and/or customers (interviews or focus groups)
Detailed competitor research gathering
Industry sizing and market trends

Funnel of key strategy decisions

This is when we do the decision making. It involves working with you (preferably in person, but virtually if needed) where Tenato provides guided discussions on various topic areas. Typically we tackle one key decision per session, which can last 1 – 3 hours.

We start with the big picture – the mission, vision and values. All of the other key decisions are a means to support the vision of where the business must go. In this way, your plan will make sense, and be tightly cohesive.

Learn More: Strategic Planning Process

Tenato offers clients the option of continuing past Phase 2, into Phase 3 – which involves us supporting the rollout of your plan. This can involve us supplying branding, marketing services, sales recruitment, sales training, website development and more.

For execution services, we usually ask for a minimum of 6 months’ commitment, but we do recommend 12 – 18 months as it can take some time before strategic plan goals are fully realized.

If you commit to a Phase 3 relationship with Tenato, we are willing to include our team in the “Key Personnel” section of your strategic plan. (But even if not, we can be listed as Advisors within the same section.) When assisting with Execution, we are open to assisting with occasional lender (bank/investor) meetings, making ongoing updates to your plan, and helping you to win your first key customers. We have hosted investor events for our clients at our offices as well, and actively participated in key investor pitches.

Parts of a Strategic Plan: A Template of Questions to Answer

The mission is the “why” you are doing this. Why does the world need your business? It addresses the problem you are solving for your most important target customer. The vision is the “where you’re going” and what your business will look like in the future. The values are the “how” you will do business philosophically that will make you distinct from others.

Making the best possible offering may mean you cannot physically create every part your product or service by yourself. In this stage, we will determine what portions may need to be outsourced, and where you will get supplies, equipment, materials and services to make your offering accomplish its intent. This is why it is important to have your mission/vision determined first. Do you aim to be the low-cost/accessible provider or the premium/high-end provider? This affects how you handle your operations. Clients often participate actively in the operations side of the planning – shopping for equipment (new or used), finding reliable suppliers, and forming lists of starting inventory needed.

Once you know what you’ll need to accomplish in-house versus outsourced, you can decide what you need for space and equipment. Many businesses can operate virtually, not needing official office space. However, they will still need to decide on an official business corporate address, and whether they want this out in the public.

Like with the operations, our clients take an active role in searching out real estate options and facility features. We also have many connections and resources we can offer to support this process.

We already have a sense of what makes you business unique, but we’ll now refine a clear, simple, overall message that answers “why you” versus the competition. In addition, we’ll clarify and tailor it for each of your target markets. This will become a direction for visuals and creative campaigns.

We usually do a brainstorm of direction with the client to get the right slant on the message, and then come back a few days later to present visual sketches that get it across clearly and distinctly.

You may think “this is beyond what I’d expect in a strategic plan” but often these creative ideas determine the types of promotion related – e.g. do we need to shoot videos, photos, or create animated visuals? These things also affect the budget, so we work to get very clear at these stages as well.

At this stage we finalize the budget for all the launch costs, time it into a launch schedule and set milestones. Within the budget, there will be role assignments for the launch team, so we know who is doing what actions and when. The budget is built in a very well-organized spreadsheet with assumptions all laid out and linked. It includes a monthly income forecast for 12 – 18 months, usually annual forecasts for years 2 – 5 or longer.

Once we know what we need to spend, and exactly how we’re spending it, we determine both the goals/milestones and the financial needs. This will show us where cash is required, and for how long until the revenue begins to turn around. This is done with detailed financial modelling.

At this point, the business owners must decide how much they want to invest personally, and how the rest of the capital should be gathered. This is articulated in a section of the strategic plan that defines their ideal lending model.

Deliverable: Strategic Plan Document

You will receive your strategic plan in a fully editable (but professionally designed) format, with spreadsheets for the financial forecasts that you can modify as time passes.

If, as part of your project scope, you have budgeted for name and brand development from Tenato (or if you have this already done prior to getting the strategic plan done), then your strategic plan will be branded with this new name, slogan, and brand colours throughout.