The Art of Strategic Planning: How to Make Your Next Offsite Actionable, Relevant, and More Than a Little Fun

A few weeks ago, the EMM team had our annual Strategic Planning offsite.  We spent three days filled with marketing and sales strategy, active listening, brainstorming, and role playing, all while getting to know each other better.  It took months of prep to ensure that no time was wasted and that everything we worked on was actionable and relevant.

Organizing and Preparing for a Meaningful Strategic Planning Session

As usual, we picked a main theme for our offsite – this year concentrating on customer retention.  As with every other year’s retreat, I read three books on this specific topic and chose one to be our Book Club book.  Everyone got a copy of the book and came prepared with their thought leadership hat on.

This year’s selection was titled How to Become a Rainmaker: The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients by Jeffrey J. Fox.  We passed on 2 other good contenders:  The Client Retention Handbook by Josh Nelson and The 1-Page Marketing Plan by Alan Dib. 

I like to pick books that are quick reads, yet offer good starting points that facilitate meaningful conversations.  This book had some chapters that were perfect for our discussions, with topics that included: ”Show Them the Money” , “Dare to Be Dumb”, and “The Six Killer Sales Questions”.  The book also had chapters that the team and I absolutely disagreed with, including one that asserts that “Customers Don’t Care About You” (I know a few of our clients who would definitely disagree with that one).  

I am frequently asked which books the team has enjoyed reading the most, and which produced the best outcomes. 

Some of my favorites from past offsites include: 

• The Energy Bus and The Positive Dog, both by Jon Gordon
• Stories That Stick by Kindra Hall
• The Science of Happiness by Bruce Hood
• Wolf Pack by World-Cup team leader, Abby Wambach (insert howl here 🐺).

Making it interactive and engaging

According to multiple sources, the optimal attention span for an audience (i.e. the attention span that can be comfortably held while listening to a speaker) is approximately 18-20 minutes (some sources quote much less time).   After 20 minutes, those great points you are trying to make are at a point of diminishing return. 

Therefore, we designed an agenda that never had more than 15 minutes of presentation before stopping and engaging in an activity, exercise, or whiteboarding session.  We also created modules where team members each presented their favorite chapter, enabling everyone to be both student and teacher. 

All our modules were designed to be interactive and included topics such as:  Fun with Marketing Math, Choosing the Best Customers, Becoming Rainmakers, and Starting the Conversation, along with fun activities such as:  Bucket List, How Well Do You Know Me?, and Emoji Charades. 

We also introduced what I call “Summation Quotations”, which are great quotes from the selected book.  With each quote, we go around the room and have everyone say what the quote means to them and how we can apply it in our business (remember, actionable and relevant).

Here are just a few Summation Quotations from previous years’ sessions:

• Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.
• Build a bridge strong enough to get your intended audience across the great divide: attention, influence, and transformation.
• A world of flat organizations and tumultuous business conditions – and that’s our world – punishes fixed skills and prizes elastic ones.
• There are no “natural” salespeople, in part because we’re all natural salespeople.
• Become what you imagine. Create what you need.  You were never Little Red Riding Hood.  You were always the Wolf.

Leading to relevant and actionable results

By the end of the 3 days, we had unearthed valuable insights and documented assets needed including:

1. A list of questions to ask customers and prospects at the beginning, middle and end of an initial conversation.
2. The understanding by each team member (even the copywriters) on how essential KPIs are, along with the importance of other measurement tools and how to calculate ROI.
3. A detailed sales meeting preparation plan.
4. How and when to ask for the next sale.

Since our offsite, we have created an action plan that documents all of core tasks discovered with a brief description of each, along with priority level, owner, and timeline to completion.

AND, the Strat Planning continues on with an action planning “czar” who is charged with holding bi-monthly meetings to ensure we are following through with this action item list.

Why invest in strategic planning?

I’ve always found our offsites to be exhilarating and they seem to give everyone on the team a jolt of energy to tackle new opportunities and deepen our commitment to our customers. Don’t just take it from me, though.  Kevin, the newest member of our team for whom this was his first Strategic Planning said, “I learned more in 3 days than in an entire semester of college”.

In looking back on some of the past Strategic Planning Sessions (we’ve been doing these annually since 2006), I realized what a wealth of knowledge we have amassed over the years.  Some of our past themes included: “Put a plan to everything we say we will do – or wipe it off the list”, “Get on the Energy Bus”, “Finding happiness in your everyday life”, “Becoming a great storyteller”, and “The year of doing things differently and embracing change”.

(Yes, this last one was in 2022 after we’d had a year of adapting to constant change during the pandemic).

Strategic Planning retreats can be incredibly powerful for generating new ideas, drilling into key subject areas, and rejuvenating a team, all while building strong ties to each other and your business.  They can also be an incredible waste of time (and money) if members are on their phones, taking long breaks, or complaining to each other about the work they have back on their desk. 

The difference is in expert structure, planning and facilitation. 

It behooves leaders to recognize that delivering a successful Strat Planning, like many other technical skills, is a talent that takes years to cultivate. 

If you’d like to see growth in your team through Strategic Planning, reach out to me at Lori@EMMinc.com – We’d love to reignite your team!