Some new thoughts on strategy...
Good morning...
I went through a little strategy session with myself this morning to make sure I was focusing on the things I wanted to focus on going forward.
This morning, I jotted down the pain point that my work addresses which is a lot of business problems creating and capturing opportunities in any market.
That's a strategy problem that might show up in the form of a lack of brand equity, poor marketing, or declining sales.
My way of addressing this point of pain is by using a better strategy and focusing on market focus, market fit, value proposition, brand equity, and other ways.
This morning's list, I took a few moments to write out 10 ways that poor strategies expose themselves to my target customers.
That list:
Declining sales
Lower profits
Fewer sales meetings
More price sensitivity
Fewer customers
Lower brand affinity
Less brand awareness
Declining marketing efficiency
More sales activity, fewer sales
Less effective tactical execution
Let me go a little further with this list to provide you some additional value this morning.
When you are looking at your results to determine if your strategy isn’t working you’ll need to consider whether or not your strategy has been in place for long enough for you to get results which is why we always push folks to have SMART objectives so you can make sure you have a way of knowing whether or not your strategy has had the chance to work.
You need to pay attention if you are being driven too much by tactics. This means that you don’t have any coherence to your actions, no focus in your direction, and you haven’t made the ultimate strategic choices of the buyers you should be focusing on and why they should pick you over the competition.
On the flip side, you need to be aware of whether or not you have a bad strategy and are just going to do that bad strategy harder! This is one I’ve been moaning about in sports ticket sales for a long time here in the States because cold calling as the only prospecting tool still dominates too many sales teams.
But for all of us, we need to make sure we aren’t just trying to jam a bad strategy down your team’s throat…just with extra effort.
Again these aren't all the ways this shows up for people, but these are the 10 most common ways. The three answers for what to consider when you are thinking about what to do with a strategy that doesn’t seem to be working covers most situations.
Do you see your business here?
How are you dealing with these challenges?
Dave