Tips for Developing a Powerful Action Plan - 2 of 3

Read on to learn specific tips and techniques for selecting tasks and action items to include in your plan -- this will help you maintain relevancy and will make your plan more feasible.

Once you've created measurable milestones, the next step is to create a list and accompanying timeline of specific action items or tasks to complete in order to hit those milestones. Simply start from the accomplishment of the goal, and then work your way backwards to the present situation and circumstances. For example, if your goal for the year is $200,000 in sales, we can evaluate our current progress thus far ($20,000, for example) and then calculate how much more is needed in sales, then allocate that monthly to figure out what we'll need to accomplish each month in order to hit the target. This can be done with any project or goal, over any time period.

Break Large Tasks into Smaller, More Manageable Chunks

Some tasks or milestones may seem more daunting to achieve than others. That's when it makes sense to break larger tasks down into smaller, more manageable chunks. For example, let's look at how we would achieve sales of $20,000 per month (when so far this year in our example, we're only averaging about $7,000). We might consider some of these options:

- upselling existing client base on complementary products or services that would benefit them at this time

- preselling future contracts at a discount or with some other benefit or incentive attached

- creating a powerful sales contest to motivate sales staff

- launching a new service or product

- etc.

Any or all of the above may or may not be feasible, and may or may not be the best course of action to dramatically increase our sales. Once this brainstorming session is complete, the next step is to select the most feasible ideas and put the corresponding action items into your plan. For example, if you choose to create a powerful sales contest to motivate sales staff, then the next step is to plan the contest, decide on the prizes and the rules, get approval from upper management, decide on the start and end dates, call a staff meeting to announce the contest to the sales staff, etc.

Put Timelines on Everything

No matter what action items you choose for which phase of your action plan, it is essential that a time frame be attached to absolutely everything. Without specific time frames and deadlines, work will definitely expand to fill the time allotted, and some tasks may never get completed.

Create a Visual Representation

Once you've created your action items and set a specific timeline, the next step is to create some type of visual representation of your plan. You might use a flowchart, a Gantt chart, a spreadsheet, or some other type of business tool to accomplish this. Then you'll want to share that visual display with your team and ensure that each person understand their role in the accomplishment of these milestones.