How to Prepare for a Powerful 90-Day Planning Session: Setting the Foundation for Business Success
Every 90-day cycle offers a fresh opportunity to grow your business and yourself as a leader. To make the most of this, you need a structured process that evaluates past performance, updates strategies, and sets actionable goals for the next quarter. This guide breaks down a 12-step process for business owners, from financials to personal development, ensuring that your business is positioned for exponential growth.
1. Success Review: Building on the Wins
Begin by reflecting on the top 5 achievements from the past quarter. Recognising success helps reinforce the strategies that work.
Write down the answers to these questions (take 20 - 30 minutes to do this):
What were the key achievements of the last quarter?
To what do we attribute these successes?
What follow-up actions should result from these achievements?
BFO 💡: Success builds confidence and momentum - you’re likely to repeat what you celebrate. Take time to acknowledge your wins. Success leaves clues - what actions or behaviours are serving you best?
Action Point: Document the top 5 achievements and create a brief action plan to extend or replicate each success in the next quarter. The “action plan” could be a one-liner.
2. Financial Review: Profit and Balance Sheet Growth
Your financial review should encompass both the P&L and the balance sheet. Assess the business’s financial health and growth by examining assets, liabilities, and equity, alongside the usual focus on sales, margins, and profit.
Key questions:
Did we meet our revenue and profit targets? What are the trends in the context of last year and last quarter?
What is happening to our margins? What are our best products? Who are our best customers?
How has the business’s balance sheet improved in the last quarter?
BFO 💡: Your balance sheet tells you what the business is worth, not just what you’ve earned. Regularly track your financial strength.
Action Point: Set monthly and quarterly goals to improve both your profit margins and balance sheet strength. Create a balance sheet growth chart to monitor progress. Focus on building a valuable asset you can sell.
Action Point: Where can you reduce costs? It’s easier to save your way to increased profits than it is to sell your way there (up to a point)
3. Value Creation Review: Increasing Business Value
Using tools like the Value Builder system, assess how much value you’ve added to the business over the last 90 days. Focus on the factors that will make your business more attractive to investors or potential buyers.
Questions to ask:
Are you building repeatable sales processes?
Have you reduced key person dependency?
Are customer relationships diversified across the team?
BFO 💡: Profit is temporary, but value is long-term. The more valuable your business is, the more options you have in the future.
Action Point: Implement one strategy to reduce dependency on key individuals by delegating a critical task or systemising a process.
4. Competitor Review: Benchmarking Against the Market
Stay informed by reviewing what your competitors are doing and how they’re performing. Look for opportunities to learn or innovate based on their activity.
Ask:
What are our competitors doing differently, and what’s working for them?
Are there any new entrants or disruptive players in the market?
Has someone gone out of business? If so, who is servicing their customers?
BFO 💡: You don’t always need to reinvent the wheel. Learn from competitors and adapt what’s working for them to your own business. Look at their USP and Guarantee and Pricing and Customers and Products.
Action Point: Identify one new marketing or product strategy a competitor is using successfully and pilot it in your business.
5. Customer Review: Feedback, Satisfaction, and Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Your customers are your best source of business insight. Use your quarterly review to examine customer feedback, track your Net Promoter Score (NPS), and assess customer loyalty.
Questions to ask:
What’s our NPS, and is it improving?
Are we acting on customer feedback to improve our services or products?
Are we receiving referrals, testimonials, and positive reviews?
BFO 💡: Delighted customers drive growth. If your customers aren’t singing your praises, something needs to change.
Action Point: Implement or upgrade an NPS system and gather feedback in the next 30 days. Set a specific target to increase your NPS score by the next quarter. Set goals for referrals and testimonials.
6. Quality and Safety Review: Meeting Standards and Accreditations
Ensure your products and services meet or exceed quality standards, and that your business complies with all safety and regulatory requirements. Check the status of certifications and accreditations which are sometimes essential for tender-based work and pre-qualifications.
Ask:
Are we consistently meeting all safety regulations? What is happening to our safety culture?
Do any certifications or accreditations need renewing? Who will collate and present and who will certify?
What is our on-time, in-full (OTIF) performance? What’s happening to our safety trends?
Do we have business continuity plans? When were they last trained and tested? Are we managing risks and opportunities?
BFO 💡: High-quality delivery sets you apart. Meeting standards and exceeding them when possible strengthens your reputation and customer trust. Governments and big firms like low-risk, high-quality suppliers.
Action Point: Schedule a review to renew or update any required certifications within the next quarter.
7. Sales and Growth Review: Focus on The 5 Ways
Evaluate the 5 Ways to grow your business:
Leads: Are you generating enough of the right kind of leads? Where are your best leads coming from?
Conversion Rate: How efficiently are you turning leads into sales? Why are you losing sales?
Repeat Business: Are customers coming back? Are they telling their friends?
Average Sale Value: Can you increase the value of each sale? Do you have an Up-Sell, Down-Sell, Cross-Sell?
Profit Margins: Are you maintaining healthy profit margins? When did you last raise prices?
BFO 💡: A 10% improvement in each of these five areas delivers 61% bottom-line growth. Focus on marginal gains to multiply your results.
Action Point: Identify one area from the 5 Ways and commit to a 10% improvement over the next quarter, whether it’s increasing leads or boosting conversion rates. If you have a bigger team, drive all 5!
8. People Review: Roles, Hiring, and Development
Your people are your greatest asset. Review your team’s structure, assess development needs, and ensure that job descriptions, person specifications, and hiring processes are up to date.
Ask:
Do we need to fill any new roles? Do we need to let anyone go?
Are the job descriptions and person specifications delivering the results we need?
What training or development is required for the team?
BFO 💡: The right people in the right roles are a multiplier for business success. Don’t just hire - develop and align your team with the company’s goals.
Action Point: Make sure you have appropriate training and development plans in place for all staff to increase their motivation, commitment, value and contribution.
9. Operational Review: Plant, Equipment, and Capital Investment
Your business’s infrastructure is critical to supporting growth. Review your plant and equipment to ensure it's performing optimally. Too many businesses struggle by with worn-out plant or the wrong tools and equipment.
Ask:
What equipment needs maintenance, service, or upgrading? Where is the bottleneck?
Are there any capital investment proposals to prepare? How will you finance the purchase?
Is the supply chain functioning efficiently? What else can you supply your customers?
BFO 💡: Unreliable equipment and delayed investments are growth killers. Maintain your infrastructure to avoid expensive downtime.
Action Point: Create a maintenance schedule for critical equipment and prepare capital investment proposals as needed.
10. Marketing and Low-Hanging Fruit: Fixing Gaps for Quick Wins
Marketing is an area where small adjustments can lead to significant gains. Conduct a marketing checklist review to ensure all the basics are working properly. I see businesses doing stupid things every day - like having the wrong phone number or email on their signage/website. Allowing foliage to obscure their signage. Not lighting their signage at night.
Check for:
Consistent Google reviews and positive feedback.
SEO optimisation - are we ranking for the right keywords?
Are there any broken links on our website?
Review your other forms of advertising - don’t focus solely on your online presence.
BFO 💡: Low-hanging fruit can boost your visibility and sales without much effort. Fix the basics before investing in complex strategies. Look at your business signage - what does it say about you and your business?
Action Point: Perform an audit of your website and fix any SEO or broken link issues within the next 30 days.
11. Personal Development: Change Yourself to Change Your Results
Growth isn’t just about the business - it’s about you, too. Use this time to update your personal affirmations and review your personal development plan. Work with your coach to identify areas where you need to grow to achieve the business results you want. The person you are today, can’t achieve the results you want next year.
Questions to ask:
What personal habits are holding me back?
What skills or knowledge do I need to develop this quarter?
How can I align my personal growth with the company’s goals?
BFO 💡: If you want different business results, you need to change yourself. The better you become, the better the business performs.
Action Point: Set one personal development goal and work with your coach to track your progress over the next quarter.
12. Goal Setting: Setting SMART Goals for the Next Quarter
Now that you’ve completed your review, it’s time to set SMART goals for the next quarter. Focus on 2-3 primary goals that align with your long-term vision.
Goals should be:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time-bound
Example:
Increase gross profit margin by 5% through process improvements. [Is not specific or time bound]
Implement a customer feedback system to raise the NPS by 15% by 22 Dec 24. [is better but needs a plan].
BFO 💡: Without clear, actionable goals, the best plans will fail. Make your goals realistic and measurable.
Action Point: Agree and document 2-3 SMART goals and assign ownership for each within your team.
Conclusion: The Path to Exponential Growth
The quarterly review process is your blueprint for consistent growth. By addressing financials, operational efficiency, personal development, and marketing, you build a solid foundation for the next quarter. Remember, exponential growth comes from incremental improvements in multiple areas - small changes that compound over time.
Lack of consistency and discipline is what prevents most of us achieving more. We all need a process like this to become high performers. Olympians track EVERYTHING.
Call to Action: Request Your 90-Day Planning Checklist
Make your next 90-day planning session even more effective by requesting our 90-Day Planning Checklist. It covers all the key areas you need to review - financials, competitors, customer satisfaction, people, and more. Download the checklist and join our Growth Club planning session to start your journey toward exponential growth.
