Business Growth Plan for Small Business (Canada): A Practical 90-Day Blueprint

What a growth plan is (and what it isn’t)

A growth plan is your decision filter for the next 90 days. It answers:

• What are we trying to improve? (revenue, profit, capacity, retention)
• How will we improve it? (a small number of levers)
• How will we know it’s working? (KPIs and leading indicators)
• What will we do each week? (cadence and accountability)

What it is not: a vision statement, a pitch deck, or a list of “nice-to-have” projects. If your plan can’t tell you what to do on Tuesday morning, it’s not operational yet.

Step 1: Choose a 90-day target you can actually manage

Most small businesses try to “grow everything” at once. The result is usually scattered effort and unclear outcomes. Instead, choose one primary target and one secondary target for the next 90 days.

Pick a primary target (examples)

• Revenue: increase monthly revenue from $25k to $32k
• Gross margin: increase gross margin from 38% to 45%
• Capacity: reduce delivery time from 14 days to 10 days
• Retention: increase repeat purchase rate from 18% to 25%

Sanity check: the “owner reality” test

Ask: Can we realistically execute this with our current team and time? If the plan requires you to work 80-hour weeks, it’s not a growth plan—it’s a burnout plan.

Step 2: Pick 1–2 growth levers (not 12)

Growth usually comes from improving a few core levers. For most Canadian small businesses, the highest-impact levers are:

Lever A: Increase qualified demand

• Improve your offer clarity and positioning
• Increase lead volume from one channel (SEO, referrals, partnerships, outbound)
• Improve lead quality (better targeting, better messaging)

Lever B: Improve conversion

• Increase discovery-to-proposal conversion
• Increase proposal acceptance rate
• Reduce time-to-close (shorter sales cycle)

Lever C: Increase profit per customer

• Adjust pricing and packaging
• Reduce cost-to-deliver (process improvements)
• Add upsells/cross-sells that fit your delivery model

Lever D: Improve retention

• Reduce churn (subscriptions/retainers)
• Increase repeat purchase frequency
• Increase customer lifetime value

Rule: choose one primary lever and one supporting lever. If you try to run all four levers at once, you won’t measure anything clearly.

Step 3: Define KPIs that match how you make money

Your KPIs should reflect your business model. Here are practical KPI sets (choose one set and keep it consistent for 90 days):

If you’re a service business

• Leading: qualified leads per week, discovery calls booked, proposals sent
• Conversion: close rate, average deal size, sales cycle length
• Delivery: utilization (rough), on-time delivery rate, rework rate
• Financial: gross margin, cash collected per week

If you’re eCommerce / product

• Leading: sessions, add-to-cart rate, email list growth
• Conversion: conversion rate, AOV, CAC (if running ads)
• Retention: repeat purchase rate, time between purchases
• Financial: contribution margin, inventory turnover (simple)

Step 4: Run a weekly execution cadence

The difference between a plan and progress is a weekly cadence. Here’s a simple rhythm that works for owner-led teams:

Weekly (30–45 minutes)

1. Score last week: review KPIs and leading indicators
2. Diagnose: what moved, what didn’t, and why
3. Choose 3 priorities: the 3 actions most likely to move the primary lever
4. Assign owners: who does what by when
5. Remove friction: identify one bottleneck to fix this week

Daily (10 minutes)

• What’s the one action today that supports this week’s priorities?
• What’s blocking progress?

If you’re solo, “assign owners” becomes “time-block it.” The principle is the same: execution needs a calendar, not just intention.

Step 5: Plan for constraints (cash, capacity, time)

Most growth plans fail because they ignore constraints. Before you commit to targets, check these three:

1) Cash constraint

• How long between doing the work and getting paid?
• Do you need deposits, milestone billing, or faster invoicing?
• Are you setting aside GST/HST/QST so it doesn’t surprise you?

2) Capacity constraint

• What is your realistic weekly delivery capacity?
• What breaks first if sales increase by 20%?
• Which process causes the most rework?

3) Owner time constraint

• Which tasks only you can do?
• Which tasks can be standardized, templated, or delegated?
• What is the minimum weekly time required to execute the plan?

A simple 90-day plan template (copy/paste)

Common mistakes (and how to avoid them)

Mistake 1: Planning in “projects” instead of levers

If your plan is a list of projects (new website, new logo, new CRM) but doesn’t connect to a lever and KPI, you won’t know what worked. Tie every action to a lever and a metric.

Mistake 2: Too many priorities

Three weekly priorities is a forcing function. If everything is a priority, nothing is.

Mistake 3: Measuring only revenue

Track leading indicators weekly so you can adjust within the 90-day window.

Mistake 4: Ignoring delivery capacity

Growing sales without improving delivery creates late work, refunds, and reputation damage. Build capacity and process alongside demand.

FAQ

How long should a business growth plan be?

For most small businesses, a growth plan should fit on 1–2 pages. The detail belongs in your weekly priorities and your operating cadence, not in a long document.

What’s the best growth strategy for a small business in Canada?

The best strategy is the one that matches your constraints. Many Canadian small businesses get the fastest wins by improving pricing/packaging, tightening conversion, and building one reliable acquisition channel (often referrals or SEO).

Should I focus on marketing or operations first?

Start with your bottleneck. If you can’t deliver reliably, fix operations. If you have capacity but not enough qualified demand, focus on acquisition and conversion.

How often should I update the plan?

Run the plan for 90 days, review weekly, and make small adjustments based on leading indicators. At day 90, reset targets and choose the next lever.