“Income, Profit, Equity.” March 2009
How do you find Strategies that Work?
You have 2 options.
1. Attend the school of hard knocks
2. Learn from other people’s experience
This isn’t rocket science and you’ve heard it before. True…the concept has been around since biblical times, but what’s the specific application in your business. Before we dig into how to make that happen, since many people often confuse strategy and tactics, let’s define our terms:
Strategy – A plan of action intended to accomplish a specific goal.
Tactic – A procedure or set of maneuvers engaged in to achieve an end, an aim, or a goal.
It stands to reason that before you can identify a specific strategy, you need a specific goal. Stephen Covey says you should ‘Begin with the end in mind.” Michael Gerber, author of the E-Myth Revisited says you should have a Strategic Objective which he describes as your vision of the business when it is complete. So if you have a clear, written, motivating goal, then you can begin to identify a strategy that works.
Determining whether a strategy will work is also dependent on your capability to execute the strategy.
For example, suppose you want to launch a new product to the North American marketplace. Your competitor may have launched a similar product using TV Ads and full page Ads in the USA Today. Even if the strategy worked for your competitor, you need to consider the tactical requirements of executing the strategy, not the least of which are budget and fulfillment.
This brings to mind many of the other considerations that businesses leave out of their thinking on a regular business. Marketing and sales can drive a company to execute certain strategies, but you have to evaluate the required tactics to execute the strategy. Consider your skill sets, staffing, spin-up time and cash flow.
If you are going to use an internet marketing strategy to launch a new service, do you have the marketing expertise to write the copy, create the specialty websites, connect the sites to a CRM (client relationship management) system, acquire the appropriate merchant accounts to process the credit cards with satisfactory limits….and on and on and on.
Here’s one consideration we’ve found helpful in planing the execution of tactics for a particular strategy. Start small and TEST a lot. Test your idea, test your product, test your copy, test your scripts, test your software, test your people, as a matter of fact TEST EVERYTHING. I know, who has time to test all this stuff, can’t we just sell stuff and make enough cash so that it doesn’t really matter?
Most people would say they believe testing is important, but when they don’t really know what to test or how to do it, they convince themselves it’s best just to press on and start selling. I contend, just the opposite is true. The market is careful with it’s dollars, you should be too. Make sure your strategy is practical and you or your team can execute the tactics.
So in the end, you can choose a strategy and tactics that you get from the school of hard knocks, or find a way to learn from others’ experience. You can do that by hiring consultants, reading books, taking courses, bringing new employees on board or outsourcing the project. Whatever you choose to do, please do it on purpose.
Cheers,
Steve
Steve Olds
Founder and CEO
www.STRATWORX.com