Why Strategy is Important in Everything You Do- Including Your Business Plan
Are you finding it challenging to write a business plan that will bring you your desired results?
Or perhaps you have already crafted a business plan, but it is not yielding the outcomes you were hoping for. Developing an effective business plan requires meticulous thought and strategic planning. Today, we are diving into the role of strategy- an essential aspect of business planning that everyone needs to recognize. It is not just about your business plans for specific timeframes like a month, quarter, or year. It is about how strategy aligns with your broader life goals.
Follow The Girls of Grit:
We'd Love to Hear Your Stories!
Your experiences are important to us. Share how you've navigated catalysts for growth and personal transformation. Connect with us on social media or leave a review on your preferred podcast platform. Your feedback and stories inspire us and guide future episodes!
Transcript:
Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies
Anneliese Rhodes: Are you struggling with how to write a business plan that will get you the results you desire? Or maybe you've written that business plan, but it's failing to deliver the anticipated results. Crafting a
Cynthia Ficara: business plan requires careful and strategic consideration. Today, we are going to talk about what this looks like in medical device sales.
Anneliese Rhodes: Welcome to the secrets and medical device sales. I am Annalisa Rose and I am Cynthia Ficarra. Together, we are the girls of grit to perfection. Special women bringing you over 40 years experience as top performers, top earners and leaders in the male dominated medical device industry. Tune in as we give you the keys
Cynthia Ficara: to unlock the secrets to success in medical device sales.
Anneliese Rhodes: Good morning, Cindy. Good morning to all of our listeners out there. Good morning, Lisa, and good morning, everyone. Hope you're all doing well. It's a rainy day here, but it is an exciting day because we are talking about something today that is so important, I think, for everybody across the board to recognize, and that's strategy.
And how strategy plays into not only your business plan that you may write up for the month, the quarter or the year, but how that plays into what your overarching goals are in life, right? I mean, what are you, what are we all working towards? So today we're going to talk about strategy and what that kind of looks like.
And it brings to mind, Cindy, A rep that I ran into, I don't know, it was a couple months ago, and she's a sweetheart girl. I know what she sells. And so we were just sitting and chatting and she's like, I am just so overwhelmed. I've got all of these products in my bag and I have to sell to this doctor and that doctor and I don't know who to go to.
She said, she goes, you know, we get paid on this bucket, but we get paid on that bucket too. But if I make both buckets, I get extra money. And I'm like. Well, then what's your business plan say? How are you strategizing this? Like, who are you calling on? And she's like, well, how do you not know where your target doctors are and your customers and your accounts?
And so we sat down for like an hour, Cindy, and talked about what accounts. Are going to be easier to break into what our accounts are going to be harder to break into. And it's like the overarching premise is strategy. And I think when you forget about what your strategy is and how you implement that into your to do list for the day or for the week for your business plan for the month, the quarter of the year, when you forget to do that, and you kind of just.
wing it, you turn out like her, who has no idea where she's going, and no idea how she's gonna get there, and it leaves you scratching your head, and then you feel hopeless. You know, you feel overwhelmed.
Cynthia Ficara: And there are more people out there than just the person that you mentioned. And that's great that you, you sat with her for a minute, because, you know, one thing I did pull out of what you said is prioritizing, you know, when she's pulled in so many different ways.
And that's awesome that you have opportunity to go and grow in this 1 bucket or in that 1 bucket and, and make money. But it's not just like somebody fires a gun on a track and everybody's like, you know, runners take your mark go. It's, it's like, stop for a 2nd and decide what lane you're going to run in.
You're going to outside inside strategy. There's so many thoughts to it. And I am so glad that we're talking about this because it is such a simple compass when you have a strategy. So I think of a strategy like a North Star, you're going to start drifting one way, drifting the other. And you've got to have something to come back to, or you're just going to run around in circles.
You know, and I think of Defining what strategy really is it's where you focus your efforts when you go to achieve your goals, but then how you're going to succeed. So, in other words, where do you play to win this? It's like, where do you play? So then how do you win? It's just a course of action that if if you're not thinking about which way to go.
Running around in circles, really not the answer. It's not.
Anneliese Rhodes: Yeah. No. And if you think about it, I feel like we all do, you know, business plans or strategic things in our life. Like for example, if you're planning a trip and you know, you want to see, I don't know if you're going to Hawaii and you want to do the road to Hana, well then you have to have to strategically get your butt up at two in the morning or three in the morning to drive the car, to get up the mountain, to watch the sunrise.
Right? So. There's strategy involved in that. Well, strategy is involved in everything. And in sales, it's really important because one of the things that we, you know, we taught, we haven't really talked a lot about, but I think maybe we take for granted sometimes as sales reps is. Our time is our time. You could totally just not go to work all week.
Now, obviously that's gonna catch up with you long term. But my point in saying that is, you could sit home on days that you don't have cases and twiddle your thumbs or, I don't know, learn how to cook a new dinner or something like that. When you should be out targeting those next customers and being strategic with where you're going to go next to grow your business and sales, you are your own CEO.
And we talk about this, Cindy. We want all of you out there to become CEOs of your own career paths. And one of the most basic, but most important things are learning how to have very strategic steps in that plan. And if you are not strategic, You can completely go off course. And in some ways, just like this rep that I was talking about earlier, it's so overwhelmed that in a lot of cases it stops people from moving forward and they just like kind of sit there and they don't go anywhere and they become complacent.
So I think what we're talking about here is really reminding ourselves of what that strategy looks like and how to continue the strategy towards that CEO of our own career path goal and how it relates to business plans, but how it relates to our overarching plan as well.
Cynthia Ficara: Absolutely, and to not have paralysis by analysis.
You know, that's something that I could just see her sitting there, why this and this and this and I'm so overwhelmed, but you have to just stop and rely back on a strategy. You need to plan before you ever start. But I think so many people just jump in and don't think about the big plan. You talk about the overarching goal.
So what's a good way? I think for our listeners to think about this is number one, if you're a medical device, you work for a company, there's going to be corporate or higher level decisions based on budget, based on pipeline, based on products, hiring, what they want to do, where they want to go. Maybe they're a startup company and they're getting ready to be bought.
Whatever that strategy is, they have certain goals in line. And so when it's the beginning of the year, the beginning of the quarter, maybe your upper management says, okay, you need to do a business plan. I mean, if you're somebody that just kind of writes something down and then weeks go by and you become the rep that you're talking about running around in a circle, well, clearly what you wrote down wasn't important.
You haven't looked at it and you have to stop and say, I am hired by this company and I need to align with their goals and my work day needs to be set out to plan to achieve these goals. For this company and for myself, and I love, you know, we say this all the time, but I think it's really kind of becoming our vision is when we speak to all of you out there, it's really empowering us to become CEOs of our own company, our own territory.
What do we control? We get to control. Do we get up or sit on the couch all day? Do we go meet a new doctor? So go back to that strategy that you should always have. And if you don't, it's no big deal. If you're listening today and you're like, Oh my gosh, that's me. I shouldn't go to that hospital, I should go there.
Pull over, go into a Starbucks, pull up your computer and just sit for a minute. Think of your doctors. Prioritize, because I guarantee you, there's still time. This is the beginning of a quarter for most people. You've got this time to really set a new path.
Anneliese Rhodes: Yeah. That's a great point. I think you're right. I mean, we can get overwhelmed so easily.
And so I think when you sit down and you take the time to really strategize and you know, Cindy sitting here listening to you, I bet money you're very good at writing up a business plan and being strategic with it. I know that I can be when I want to be, when I want to put forth the effort and I know what my company's goals are.
I know what my goals are. And I know what my overarching goal is, whether that's President's Club, or, you know, money for a great trip to Alaska, or whatever it is. I know when push comes to shove how exactly to be strategic and that is what creates that success, is you learn how to be super strategic and listen, nobody's perfect at it and sometimes we screw up and we targeted the wrong physician or the wrong hospital or whatever.
You learn how to pivot, you learn how to change. But I think you bring up a really good point that you need to make sure that you're always involving your company's mission and your company's strategic plan as well. And it's important to really understand that, you know, when you go to a, a national sales meeting, or let's just say you're starting out and they throw all of this stuff at you with a bunch of numbers and they're, you know, CAGR numbers and all this stuff, and it's like, whoa, this is a lot of like metrics.
Take the time to understand that I think that's really important and I don't think I started doing that until later on in my career here in medical devices to really understand that when you start to learn that it brings you in a little bit more corporate wise it ties you a little bit more to the company and now you're really dedicated to helping them get there and you know, There's an old saying, every nickel counts.
I mean, every dollar counts. Your dollars count as much as your next, your, your colleague's dollars. And even if you're the last person on the totem pole, if you continually follow through with that strategic plan of your company and your own, you will end up on top. There's no doubt. You will absolutely end up on top.
Cynthia Ficara: agree. What was that show? It was a reality survivor. And they would sit there and, you know, it's like, well, you know, you have to ration out your food or, or we're going to be spending, okay, the sun's going to go down, we better plan ahead, make sure we have shelter, but then you're competing with other people.
That is like summarized of strategy. If you just go out there and say, okay, I'm going to go into survivor and just jump out there, not prepared, no plan, who to lean on, who not, I mean. You might as well just say you're heading home and we don't want anybody out there to go into a medical device company like Survivor and just turn around and leave because there's so many great ways to find that north star and plan strategically and you know Lisa and I've had so many years of doing this that we mentioned um, in our podcast earlier about we're offering a one to one consulting and sit here and to walk through maybe this is something you're struggling with.
I absolutely love to be organized, and I love to write things down. I'm somebody that is like, very, if you write it down, I'm accountable. So, if this is something you're struggling with, you are not alone. And Lisa and I have a lot of different ideas and strategies. So, if you're, if you're seeking help, by all means, you Click on our website and go to the top right where it has book now.
We'd be more than happy to walk through some of these things with you, because we don't want you to end up like Survivor in a desert with no shelter, no water, and no food. That's such a great point. And no sunscreen. That would hurt.
Anneliese Rhodes: No sunscreen. I know, by the way, that like really freaks me out. Like, I'm like, I would be the person with mud on me at all times because I have such light skin and I'm a light headed person.
But anyhow, getting off topic, but you know, one thing that you meant as you're talking, Cindy popped into my head that we talk about a lot. Like we talked about it in our credibility episode. Is confidence. And I will tell you, I think a good strategic plan gives you confidence. It builds that confidence because what you'll see is you'll see your results.
You'll see it pay off. You'll see your buckets being filled, you know, be being hit with the revenue dollars that you're looking to hit. You'll get the boost from the upper management saying, wow, good job. You just hit X amount of dollars in this bucket. And all of that is confidence building, which All of us need all the time to become CEOs of our own career paths because it helps us believe in ourselves.
So I think that this strategic way of approaching your business plan, the strategic way of approaching your everyday sales calls is so important. And like Cindy said, She and I love this kind of stuff. I mean, I literally like sat down with that girl for an hour, just helped her out because I, I wanted to help her out.
I knew she was struggling and that's what we feel for all of you. So if anyone out there is scratching their head saying, you know what? I know how to write a business plan, but am I being strategic enough? Am I being smart enough with the products that I'm selling? Am I going to get to that overarching goal?
If that answer is maybe or a no, click book now, right now, and we will help you get there because we know how to make a winning business plan. And it's all about being strategic. And sometimes it takes somebody else to kind of point out some things that maybe you don't see. I know I've leaned on some people for help over the years of writing business plans.
I mean, now I can do it pretty well, but it took some time. It's not like it just comes naturally.
Cynthia Ficara: You know, it's crazy all of these things, like some of these struggles in so many different examples, for instance, the one girl you were talking about how she, I don't even know where to go. I'm so overwhelmed.
But then let's say somebody else kind of, that's all tied to strategy, right? That can be solved with a strategic reset button. There may be somebody else who is just feeling like I'm just not motivated today, blah, blah, blah. That is also tied to strategy. There may be someone who's like Well, my number is just too high.
I can't hit this and just complaining and excuses, you know, maybe that's all tied to Strategy, there are so many things out there that we just think it's really important today to remind you stop where you are Whatever you're struggling with and think maybe I got to go all the way back to the beginning and it's something very very simple It's realign what you're doing And go for it because that's where strategy is.
Follow your North star. And as they say, what is it? Shoot for the moon and you land on a star or shoot for the star. I forget what it is, but there's some really great things. So we should always be shooting for the stars, right? So yes, do not forget strategy. This may be the one little thing that is either holding you back today, or even if you're not really being held back, think about your strategy, re engage your strategy, and I guarantee this is going to really propel your business forward today.
Anneliese Rhodes: So our call to action today is exactly what we already mentioned in the episode. Click book now and select a consultation with Cindy and I, and we can help you form that business plan if you're struggling with it, or help you re strategize it so that you can be successful in your own career paths, because we want you to be CEO of your own career path.
Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Secrets and Medical Device Sales. Brought to you by the Girls of Grit. We hope you have a wonderful week, a wonderful month, and a great year. Have a good day. Buh bye! Buh bye!
