The Brand Founder’s Guide to Strategic Planning

Quarterly strategic planning is essential for successfully scaling your DTC brand.  Learn how to run the proven quarterly strategic planning process that we’ve used to help dozens of brands scale with confidence. 

Why Quarterly Strategic Planning?

Given that Q1 2024 just ended, I want to provide you with a guide to running incredibly fun and efficient quarterly strategic planning meetings.  Many brands don’t plan quarterly, and those who do have little to no structure around how they run their planning meetings, resulting in long, drawn out meetings that leave the leadership team confused and uncertain about what their priorities are for the next 90 days.   

After spending a decade scaling DTC brands, I’ve learned that quarterly planning is essential.  Why?  In this fast-changing business environment, your brand needs to be nimble and adaptable.  The only way to do that is to revisit your strategic plan multiple times throughout the year, and I’ve found that quarterly is the perfect frequency.   

Additionally, I’ve also found that quarterly strategic planning is best done with the leadership team offsite, away from the office.  Holding the meeting offsite allows the team to separate from the day-to-day fire fighting that happens during a typical office workday and rise above to “work on the business” instead of getting sucked into “working in the business.” 

So, let’s get to it!  The following is the typical agenda format I follow for running a full eight-hour day of leadership team quarterly strategic planning.  Enjoy! 

Step #1 - Review the Previous Quarter 

1. Review your previous quarter’s actual numbers against your targets for the quarter.  Where did you hit your targets and where did you miss?  Discuss any gaps between your targets and actuals, what drove them, and what adjustments you’ll make in future quarters to close these gaps.  In this section of the meeting, I often see discussion around revenue, margin, profit, and other key DTC measurables like LTV, NPS, and percentage of revenue from subscriptions. 

2. Review your previous quarter’s goals – discussing whether they were achieved and what you learned throughout the quarter as you executed against them.  Follow this checklist as a guide: 

   1. Was the goal completed?  Simply state ‘done’ or ‘not done.’ 

   2. Conduct an After-Action Review (AAR) on your goals to uncover learnings that you’ll take with you into the future.  Ask yourself the following AAR questions: 

      • What worked? 

      • What didn’t work? 

      • Keep - What will we keep doing? 

      • Improve - What can we improve? 

      • Start - What will we start doing? 

      • Stop - What will we stop doing? 

   3. Decide what to do with incomplete goals.  You can either: 

      • Carry them forward to next quarter with the same owner. 

      • Assign the final steps to someone in the form of a task(s) to be completed in the next week. 

      • Reassign the goal to someone else. 

Step #2 - Review Your Vision 

Refresh the team’s memory on your vision to make sure everyone is still 100% on the same page.  If the entire team is not on the same page, discuss and debate until they are.  This portion of the meeting is critical.  If the entire leadership time is not 100% on the same page about you vision, there will be division and lack of buy-in when you establish your new quarter’s goals in step #3 below.  

Your brand’s vision should consist of its: 

1. Core values 

2. Purpose or reason for existence 

3. Niche 

4. 10-Year vision statement 

5. Marketing strategy 

6. 3-Year plan 

7. 1-Year Plan 

I personally use the EOS V/TO™ framework for building out a brand’s vision.  For more information on EOS, feel free to reach out to us.  As EOS experts we can help you navigate how to use the V/TO™ to build out your vision. 

Step #3 - Establish New Quarterly Goals 

With your vision clearly in view and your leadership team fully aligned, now it’s time to set your new quarterly goals.  Here’s the process I use: 

1. Establish your quarterly numbers targets: revenue, margins, profit, and 1 to 2 additional key measurables that measure key strategic drivers in your business. 

2. List out everything that must get done in the quarter. 

3. Decide to keep, kill, or combine everything on the list, boiling them down to the most important three to seven quarterly goals for the company. 

4. Assign each goal a due date and owner. 

5. Finish establishing the quarterly goals for each leadership team member. 

   • Carry forward any company goals that he/she owns. 

   • Come up with the rest of his/her most important three to seven priorities for the quarter. 

Step #4 - Review Next Steps and Conclude the Meeting 

Now that your quarterly plan has been established, conclude the meeting by following these steps: 

1. Review who is doing what. 

2. Review whether any messages need to be communicated to the rest of the company. 

3. Have everyone on the team provide feedback on the meeting and rate it on a scale from 1 to 10. 

Conclusion 

In conclusion, quarterly leadership team strategic planning is essential for successfully scaling your brand.  Revisiting and setting goals quarterly ensures that your brand’s plan remains relevant, flexible, and informed by the most recently available information and learnings. I hope the agenda I’ve provided in this article is helpful. 

If the thought of implementing a quarterly strategic planning process overwhelms you, and you don’t have a CFO on your team, consider hiring a Fractional CFO to help. A great CFO should be able to run an efficient and effective strategic planning process. 

At Free to Grow CFO we provide founders of growing DTC brands with the strategic guidance they need to scale their business with confidence.  And – we’re experts at running strategic planning meetings. 

Whether you choose to enlist the help of a Fractional CFO or take a stab at it alone, start your quarterly strategic planning process today!  You won’t regret it.  Until next time, scale on!