We’re often asked by CEOs, “How do I know if my company has a strong strategic plan?” Followed by, “If my company doesn’t have an effective strategy, how the heck do we go about getting one?”
In the world of strategic market planning there are hundreds of theories, but, luckily, there are a few tools you can use to check your strategic plan quickly. We’ve included here a handy set of references that will help you benchmark your strategic program and also highlighted a “before and after” case study of a middle-market business-to-business company.
Moving from best efforts to best practices
Typically, company strategic plans rely upon the best instincts and efforts of the leadership team. This process could be termed an “in strategy.” Gut instincts are often employed to determine an organization’s most important decisions. If executives guess right, all is well. But if they guess wrong, disaster can result.
If you find yourself in this situation, here are three best practices that will help guide your company to success:
Best Practice #1: Make sure your leadership team is fully aligned on what the company’s top-three strategic initiatives are, and working as a cohesive group on achieving them.
Best practice #2: Make sure everyone in your company understands your value proposition and can state it in a simple sentence or two. An example might be, “Our company invented the XYZ product that can save your company up to 50 percent on your energy costs during the first year.”
Best Practice #3: Ensure your company has an objective brand asset valuation. This means you know what your brand’s strengths and weaknesses are against your top competitors. We are not talking about your logo or website. Those are not your brand. Rather, your brand is how others think about your company as a distinctive organization and its association with what they need.
A company we recently worked with had a tremendous technical skill set and naturally marketed the business using its in-house, techno-speak team, thinking this would impress its customers. In actuality, it turned them off. So much so, the only people who really understood what they were talking about were the employees inside the company. While we favor an organization developing its own way of doing things and talking about them, customers need to readily understand the communications and be able to respond easily.
Through a series of active workshops, we gathered information on the company’s service offerings into its language first, then interpreted these service descriptions and rewrote them in simple, everyday language. The net result was more effective marketing presentations leading to an increase in business development.
This is one example of how a company improved its strategic market planning. For other examples, click here.
Tom Wants to Hear Your Branding Issues:
If you are a printing company or product/services company serving the print-media market and would like to be considered for a feature in this blog, please contact Tom Marin for an interview.
Follow MarketCues on Twitter for branding and social media tips, as well as the latest trends. Tom also welcomes emails, new LinkedIn connections, calls to 407.330.7708 or visit www.marketcues.com. How can he help solve your branding issues?
- Categories:
- Business Management - Marketing/Sales
Tom Marin is the Founder and President of MarketCues, Inc., a national consulting firm. He has worked for some of the world’s largest corporations and middle-market firms. Tom’s focus is to help CEOs drive their strategy shifts and strategic growth programs. Follow MarketCues on Twitter. Tom also welcomes emails new LinkedIn connections or calls to (919) 908-6145.