Strategy: How to outcompete the competition; finding sustainable competitive advantage
Sustainable Competitive Advantage
Few companies can lay claim to the holy grail market position for any length of time, retaining a sustainable position within a market. Here are some that come immediately to mind: Ferrari, Rolls Royce, Hoover, Apple’s Phone, Boeing, Walkman, Sky, Microsoft Windows, are all good examples of global companies who have achieved that today. Sustainable competitive advantage is the ability to create and sustain a position within a market. Sustaining a desirable market position provides long-term competitive posiitoning for that brand.
The competitive advantage most companies strategically aim for is to own the space of early adopter within an adoption curve. That position is where a brand is seen as a premium player, producing innovative new products and services and able to command and earn premium prices for those products. That premium position, finding, and holding the early adopter position in any market, is seen as the optimum competitive advantage position within any market.
By finding that competitive position, and often helping creating the market structure, a brand takes ownership of that the competitive position and often drives the development and evolution of the market. A company can choose to operate anywhere within a market and make it competitive if they build their business model to a defined market position.
Making it Sustainable
Making a competitive position sustainable requires a brand to develop its ability to sustain its position over the long term. That sounds easy in theory, but in reality is hard. Short-term attitudes in growth and profit can easily distract a leadership teams focus. Failing to invest in sustaining their brand’s market position, or stakeholder demands short-term profit taking, are two of the most common pulls that destabilise a brands’ established market position.
The challenge for any leadership team with their business is to be able to see the market position they want within that market position. Sustainable competitive advantage, the holy grail of a successful business is not easy to find, straight forward to own or simple to sustain, and that’s why it is every leaders’ holy grail.
How to Outcompete the Competition
In mature (and often saturated) markets developing a unique strategic position can give a business sustainable competitive advantage. A sustainable competitive advantage in any market is the holy grail for business owners. To be somewhere that your competitors aren’t, and to have something that cannot be taken away, is what every business leader wants to achieve in setting up in business, and dreams of achieving. It is one clear defining way of out competing the competition is to develop a sustainable competitive advantage in a market.
Dyson Vacuum Cleaners
To be recognised as the market maker, such as Hoover, whose name is synonymous with vacuum cleaners, gave the Hoover brand unbelievable control of the market for most of the 20th century. Hoover, the brand leader owned the global market, with an unparalleled history, and complete market dominance. The brand name itself became synonymous with the product category, everyone hoovered with a Hoover.
So what changed? A loss of focus and desire to continue to own the market coupled with the airplane ticket fiasco which opened the door to new competitors. One man in particular James Dyson who grabbed the opportunity to replace Hoovers’ once held position in the market launching his own Dyson brand through technology shift of his cyclone bag less vacuum.
His passion, created from vacuuming at home and becoming frustrated, seeing the cyclone idea at a sawmill which then took 15 years, 5,127 prototypes to turn into a winning product. Today this winning product benefits upon 60% recommendation purchases and has allowed Dyson to spin his cyclone technology into hair and air dryers as well as washing machines.
Features of Strategic Competitive Advantage
What are the key features of sustainable competitive advantage for any company in their market, well here are the most commonly found top five:-
- Charge a premium for its services; even low cost suppliers out price other low cost suppliers.
- Lead the market through innovation; will get to market new ideas quicker or in a more dominant way to shift the market to your agenda.
- Controls the key channels to market; from buying decision processes to pricing structures.
- Owns the pace of change within the market; from technology development and consumer mind set, being the pace setter in the market.
- Control of buyer activity; the significant majority of the Share Of Buy (SOB) and Share Of Space (SOS) decsions through its dominance.
Sustainable competitive advantage is an extremely difficult goal. Most successful brands only ever achieve the challenger market position, one that challenges existing perceptions within a market. Developing a sustainable competitive advantage requires an organisation to constantly challenge not only the competition but also itself, to sustain its desirable position within its market.
Creating dominant sustainability requires the leadership to create a clear vision of where the company is going and where the market opportunity exists. It takes leadership with passion, dedication and drive for a brand to succeed in moving from a challenger brand to one which can dominate its market such as Dyson. For men like James Dyson, the advantage was that he was in the right place at the right time, with the right product. That has enabled a technological shift in the market with his bag less vacuum and a move to smaller cable-less products dominate the innovator position within the market.
Learn More about Strategy
If you want to develop your company’s position then there needs to be a vision for it. Where it is going and why. If your look for some advice on developing your company, its marketing, its sustainable competitive advantage then contact us at Cowden Consulting to see how we can assist you, or read more about us in this blog or at Cowden Consulting.
Values matter in BUSINESS more than ever as Ikea have found out
In today’s information driven world, how you do business matters as much as the business you do, as Ikea the iconic Swedish furniture retailer has just found out. Ikea’s green credentials have been dealt a massive blow in consumer’s minds. Ikea’s failure to support sustainability in its products leaves customers questioning its real values as a business.
Ikea only 16% sustainable wood
Ikea’s failure to achieve its own most modest target of 30% of its wood products to be from certified sustainable wood, will damage it its credibility heavily with its key audiences. The fact that it only hit 16%, has a massive blow on the values it professes as promoting sustainably sourced materials and to its environmental positioning. Compare that with Homebase (78%) and B&Q (77%), which won the best green award 2010.
The excuse given in its defensive press statement is that it has sacrificed the values of sustainability for rapid growth and protecting its profitability (£2.3billion). But short term greed like this can cost dearly on both growth and profitability over the long term.
Ikea’s staff not telling the truth
This corporate failure was made worse by staff telling customers in store that its products are from sustainable sources. When in fact they are from illegal logging in places such as Russia. This insatiable drive for growth, which so often undermines trusted names, may damage the Swedish brand’s position as the leader in the flat pack market significantly. This expose means that Ikea will now undergo microscopic environmental and customer scrutiny.
Ikea’s soft “long term” aspirational statements on their website with links to the Rainforest Alliance are unlikely to be seen as enough in the modern world where green wash marketing such as this are quickly exposed and penalised. When the spotlight of the green world is turned on, it is difficult to hide in the shade.
The World Bank suddenly in the late 1980’s promoted its ‘green credentials’ by promoting itself as having employed ‘an environmentalist’, to offset its image of chopping down forests for cash crops. This green wash story was quickly exposed when it was pointed out the World Bank employed some 5,000 economists, what difference would/could one environmentalist make?
Values must be transparent
The way you provide your product or service and to whom, says more about you than how much business you do. Being big in a highly segmented world is no longer the determinator of success. How you do your business now determines your current credibility and future success. Credibility is as much about your values in becoming successful as about the success you have. Mohamed Al-Fayed for example, despite buying Harrods, never shook off questions about his background.
Your values as an organisation as demonstrated by everyone inside your organisation matter to both existing and potential customers in choosing to do business with you. People have choices and they can now exercise them more freely than ever before, and that means customers can access information instantly to make choices that are more informed. Ikea’s staff misinforming undercover Times reporters about their sustainable and certified sourced products at a number of shops are one symptom of Ikea’s rapid growth boardroom culture.
Values Must Live In The Moment
Almost everything in life is in real time and instantly communicated to circles of influence and beyond. A restaurant having bad night can have a poor reputation before the starter has even been cleared away as customers post live feed back to sites such as Qype or Trip Advisor . Therefore, before the waiter, maitre d’ or chef knows what’s happening the world outside already does by Twitter and Facebook and are cancelling their reservations in their droves.
Why clean lavatories matter?
The old adage that if you want to know how clean the restaurant kitchen is, inspect the lavatories. This is because they tell you how the restaurant values cleanliness, is a great example of modern customer awareness. Do you live your values or just post them on your website? Is the question customers want to know in establishing and experiencing trust with you and your brand.
You can spend as much as you like on your website, Google reviews and trip Advisor comments, but simple first impressions such as the state of lavatories matter more to customers.
Rail companies learning fast
The recent story of the man on the train talking too loudly causing enraged customers to Tweet complaints about his behaviour which was picked up by a duty manager hundreds of miles away who then contacted staff on the train to track down the loud caller and asked him to quieten down.
This story is very much testimony to the growing demands of customer expectations, immediate online response, not waiting for passing train staff to react. This story is part of the reputation shift that train companies are actively pursuing.
Values are in the detail
Values matter, they define the real differences between companies. How British Airways treats its customers through the values it embeds in its entire organisation is what makes it different to other premium airlines and distinguishes it from them, and from the bucket providers such as Ryanair.
However, as everyone de-layers in response to changing business models, cost and modernisation requirements, values can be lost in the rush to modernise and compete in new ways. BA’s changes to its premium dinner menu, introducing exotic main courses such as crocodile and ostrich sounded good but simultaneously cutting the After Eights, so there was not to go around 1st class passengers was a classic example of getting its values wrong in its customer’s eyes.
Values Must Involve Everyone
If you value your customers then remember everyone needs to smile in their role, if you believe in providing excellent customer service then don’t cut your front of house staff numbers.
Too many companies’ ideas of communicating values are to place a statement on a website, brochure, at reception and on the induction training programme. How many companies look at the strategic advantage of values and embed it into people’s roles, asking staff to define their role by those values by redefining their role to live those values? How many companies review those values as outcomes in winning and retaining customers?
Values as seen by Customers and Employees
Customers, potential and existing, are drowning in choice. What makes you stand out to them is the values you own and can demonstrate as a business. Statements on walls and websites always sound good, (possibly, because they are written by marketing people who do not work there) but unless the company lives them, then they do more damage than good. Over promising and under delivering is a growing experience for everyone today.
Whether it is a London hotel, stating it’s exclusiveness, as evidenced by its 5 star, pretty pictures on the website of its presidential suite and over the top statements such as “sumptuous 5 star accommodation” the jaw dropping price tag. When you turn up and find a broom cupboard with not enough space to turn around in let alone swing a cat, and you are one of 500+ rooms filled with bus loads of tourist on a package holiday then company values are under pressure.
The same is equally true for staff. Why should people stay loyal to you if you don’t live those values and enshrine them in every one of your people. Do they live it or lip service it?
New company’s leadership must create true values
New companies have the unbridled opportunity to define their values from the start. By building them into their business model throughout the entire process from the beginning, providing value and clarity with every new role and new person, they can use their values to maximum leverage for attracting their chosen customers and staff.
So Googles’ “DO NO HARM” value won many plaudits, breaking down the concern about the is was then rightly questioned by their policy in China of being seen to be supporting censorship (try typing Tienanmen Square Massacre into Google in China it never happened!). Now there is a good argument that rightly says any Google is better than no Google, but the contradiction against their stated values upset many Google Supporters elsewhere in the world.
Your values should come from within. What do you stand for? What does your company do? How should everyone do it? What does excellence look like? Some classic questions to understand the values you offer. I often ask people to think of an animal or car which best describes there organisation
Keeping Values Alive
Established companies inherit values, often without realising they have them in place, “its how we do it around here” type phrases are often values hidden inside everyday activity. Keeping values alive is often hard in rapidly changing under-pressure environments. Changes in leadership, particularly when cross industry leadership is introduced or when new pressures are introduced from changing ownership for example often end up throwing out the hidden value of a brand in the race to achieve short-term results.
Everyone entering a company, particularly top executives, must understand the core heritage values any organisation has, how they are owned and expressed. The best way to achieve that is for new people to present those values back under peer group review and add to them with the changes they intend to introduce. New products/services need to incorporate core values and learn to demonstrate them in new ways as new channels of communication are opened up.
Values Check List
- Are your values visual to your team and customers?
- Does everyone know your core values, have you checked?
- Can all your people translate them into their daily role?
- Do people see the company values in other people’s roles within the organisation?
- Do customers comment on those values in their dealings with your company in formal and informal feedback channels?
If you can only answer confidently to only points one and two then you are not living your values as a business. If you cannot hand on heart even answer those two them its probably time to look at your values in a lot more detail. Spend time to think through what you and your business stands for and get in touch if you need any assistance in creating values which matter to you.
Leadership Strategy
Learn more about strategy and leadership and how as a leader to create your strategy, with all the steps to build your own strategy, click here to buy the book now:-
Strategy: The Leader’s Role by Richard Gourlay, a book fo how you can create your business strategy, with all the tools a business leader needs to build their business strategy.
Success in Business: Starts with the END in mind
Here’s a simple question to ask any business owner, why are you in business? The answer to such a simple question can be very enlightening. The flippant answer is to make money: an honest, if not inspiring answer; but there is a fundamental flaw in that statement which many business owners fails to comprehend. They start a business, typically through experience in, or a passion in the field or because they have seen an opportunity to make money, but fail to achieve that ultimate goal because they fail to plan their exit strategy. Planning your exit strategy is the hidden key to business success.
Start with the END in Mind Strategy
Most business owners focus solely on profitability as their key measure of success. Yet making a profit from a business is more than just yearly profitability. It is also about building a business which is an asset that your target buyer is looking to buy. If you can’t get out making the money you intended to when you sell up, then why did you set up the business in the first place?
You have a great idea, you work on it, and spend your energy (and life) building it until it becomes you. It succeeds, and you enjoy the lifestyle it brings then the challenge of maximising that income to free yourself up and retire or do something else with your success. That final stage often becomes impossible because you are the business and it is you, its lifeblood, main cheerleader and driving engine.
This typical scenario of being a business owner, is driven by the passion to run the business day-to-day overshadowing the failure to plan your exit strategy from the start. That is building a business with a clear objective to enable the owner to get out and maximising their income from what they have achieved. Nearly all business owners focus on building a successful business, but not on making sure they maximise their returns from the successful ownership of the business.
Business planning is vital for successful exit from a business.
Exit Strategy
The real payback from all that hard work in creating and setting up a business for an entrepreneur is the final payback, the exit payoff. It is the value creation in within the business, the shareholder value being realised by a sale of that business, which makes al the hard work worth it. Few owners think about realising their shareholder value. Most being more interested in the Profit and Loss than the Balance Sheet when making key decisions about the business. That approach is effectively summarised in the phrase;
the turnover is vanity,
profit is sanity and
cash is king,
A great motto in the running of any business, but it does not hold true in achieving a successful exit strategy success, as a business owner. I would add to that classic phrase;
success is true shareholder value
Achieving shareholder success is the key motto to follow if you want to have a saleable asset, that reflects the true value of your business when you decide to sell u and move on. Owners need to focus of developing an exit strategy which achieve their personal goals. While profit and cash rule the day, building a valuable asset requires building shareholder value, through building sustainable long-term profitability. Building the business assets, the real shareholder value, needs to include strategies around Intellectual Property (IP), long term profitable contracts, strategic relationships and operational excellence that maximise the company’s value to targeted purchasers.
Successful Business Planning
Success in business requires owners to build a business which you own, but one you are not concreted into the foundations of its success. Building a forward strategy for your business is a vital first step in building your exit strategy, it is the old adage that you need to work on it not in it which underpins all successful entrepreneurs. Building the forward strategy to exit, is therefore different that just building a successful business. Planning from start to exit, means focusing on the exit strategy requirement of increasing shareholder value which is recognised as valuable assets by target buyer audiences.
Short-term profitability is always an important goal, but long-term share value is a strategic consideration which owners need to consider in building the value of their business. If you would like to discuss this article further or further information about our services in working with business owners in achieving successful exit strategies then contact us at enquiries@cowdenconsulting.com or see our contact page for further options.
Successful Leaders Plan Their Business
Business Planning
Business planning often gets a bad press. Yet those who do sit down and plan their business are so much more focused, confident, and successful than those who float along with the economic tide. Successful leaders plan their business, so they can focus on leading their team to deliver that plan.
Over the past ten years as a strategic planner we’ve worked with hundreds of business owners and seen how those that create a plan and implement it. Those that plan their business do so much better than those owners who try aimlessly lead their business on a wing, a prayer or a dream. Successful leader’s plan their business, so that everyone knows where they are going what their role is in achieving that success.
According the latest BERR report, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME’s) together accounted for 99.9 per cent of all enterprises, 59.8 per cent of private sector employment and 49.0 per cent of private sector turnover. SME’s really do matter to the British economy, and yet they receive little effective support from Government agencies despite being the backbone of the economy, employment, and innovation.
Why Business Leader’s Don’t Plan
“If you don’t make things happen, things will happen to you” Lanes Company
Having questioned business owners over the last decade the reasons why owners have not put a plan in place and then executed it, the excuses range from not having the skills, make the time, or have the conviction of their thoughts. Owners know they should have a plan ‘we had one when we first started, but have not looked at it since’ is a common theme. The other is being too busy fire fighting to realise that preventing fires starting, is the best way to not have to fight them.
Do business owners not see the value in developing a plan for their business? On the other hand, is the classic perception for business owners that frenetically staying alive is seen as being successful? For many not knowing how to plan is one major reason why people haven’t and don’t plan their business. Where to start, and how to know what they are trying to achieve immediately puts people of planning.
Faults in Business Planning
Business planning is also often at fault here. The most common reason new start up businesses create a business plan is to secure funding from banks, that’s when banks did fund business start-ups (now they just offer a high interest mortgage backed by the Government). Therefore, once people have received funding they no longer see the main advantages of planning (and the real advantages are not around money).
Business planning is not an accident it is intentional.
Business Planning Skills – Have some GOALS
“The discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen.” – Lee Iacocca
Planning takes time, resources, (grey stuff) not the executive trip to some exotic away weekend planning, but some time allocated to review where you are as a business, how your sector and industry are performing and what you want to achieve in the future. Whether it is looking at the next year or planning the next five years, everyone who owns or directs a business is responsible for setting its direction. However, just having a plan in your head, with the classic defence of ‘its flexible at the moment’ is either ducking the responsibility or deluding themselves.
The only way to have a plan rather than a dream is to have it written down, turned (if it is not already) into an action plan which is resourced and owned by someone to deliver. Only then do businesses go forward in a deliberate purposeful way. Only then do the right things happen because you made them happen and only then can everyone, employees, shareholders, customers, channel partners and even other halves, see your dream, share your dream, deliver your dream. That’s when planning works. It is a written document, which lives within your company, and it doesn’t matter if you are a one-man (woman) band or running a multi-national Plc.
What Business Planning Delivers
| “In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.” – Robert Heinlein |
Have a business plan that works for your business as a leader
Planning provides focus in strategic direction. It provides clarity of where the business is and where it is going as well as a vehicle for getting from where you are to where you want to be. Planning time out of the business provides time to reflect on personal and corporate goals, time to share and channel new ideas while reviewing existing activities.
Planning in a structured and open format develops clarity of purpose and a clear understanding of the organisational and individual skills people have and can use to leverage advantage. Bringing in outside views widens the planning horizon, a fresh perspective to drive businesses forward. This is why many successful businesses use non-executive directors or outside specialists to help drive their business forward. That is one reason why so many people volunteer to get support from people like the Dragons from Dragon’s Den, they are looking for expertise and advice which gives them confidence to go forward as much as the money.
Plan More For Success
British business owners need to plan more often to keep being successful. Good planning creates and sees opportunities as owners and directors lift their heads up from the daily grindstone. How often should you plan? Well it all depends on the speed of your market’s evolution, but even stable and stagnant businesses should review their business every year, and not just a light dusting (add ten percent and change the year) but strategically review what and how well they are doing.
It is only by looking for fresh opportunities and how to take best advantage of them, by planning your business around those opportunities, that companies successfully compete in today’s business environment.
Business Planning is not a four letter word
“An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage” Jack Welch
The old adage, compete or get beat, is more relevant today than it has ever been. The rise of the Internet means there are no secrets, competitive advantage lies with those who can see an opportunity and adapt fastest to take advantage of it. Those owners and directors who see and go for opportunities become the stronger ones. That is where good strategic business planning provides it real advantage. That’s why successful leaders plan their business to achieve that success.
By orientating a company to where it can retain better, win new and develop existing customers companies that plan their success out compete in their sector, and equally importantly have everyone focused on where they are going. From the smallest to the biggest every business needs to have a plan that is written down, owned and guiding your business in the direction you want it to go.
Good Luck
| Richard Gourlay |
@richardgourlay
www.cowdenconsulting.com
Values matter in BUSINESS more than ever
Values must be transparent
The way you provide your product or service and to whom, says more about you than how much business you do. Being big in a highly segmented world is no longer the determination of success. How you do your business now determines your current credibility and future success. Credibility is as much about your values in becoming successful as about the success you have. Mohamed Al-Fayed for example, despite buying Harrods, never shook off questions about his background.
Values Must Live the Moment
Why clean lavatories matter?
Rail companies learning fast
Strategy: The Leader’s Role by Richard Gourlay
What Makes a Great Brand (Part 2)
Clear Brand Strategy
Everyone Must Live The Brand
Great Brands
Looking for Advice
Strategy: The Leader’s Role by Richard Gourlay click to learn more
Where Does Tomorrow’s Business Growth Come From?
Where does tomorrow’s business growth come from?
Business growth is not an accident. Why some businesses succeed and others do not is not by chance. Busienss growth requires leadership to plan out where they are going within there market. All markets change through both evolution and revolution (think of those disruptive players in any market and the impact they have.) This slideshow explains why it is important for leadership to use business planning tools to effectively plan their growth.
In every market there is always new opportunities always arising. Markets do not go up (or down) equally. Some segments and individual customers grow faster than others due to their strategic or tactical successes. Knowing where external and or internal market factors are influencing or driving segments within any market is the vital strategic insight which leadership teams need to understand. Even markets declining do not do so at equal rates. Change happens in every market so knowing where to look for positive changes within any market is a key skill for leaders to learn.
Being successful in business is all about seeing the bigger picture and understanding future growth. For a business to grow and develop, the leadership team must invest time building it. That requires the leadership to step back from the day-to-day operations of the business and focus on working on the business. Like to learn more, click the slide presentation below to learn successful leaders work on their business to find growth.
Strategic Planning Workshop
Strategic Planning Workshop
Strategic planning is the process of defining your business’s key priorities as a business. Successful business’s have clear priorities which their business as a whole unit focuses on to achieve. Each of these key priorities are defined within a business as a strategy. A strategy, a course of action which will deliver a pre-determined business goal.
Successful business planning is about developing your strategic plan for your business based upon proven business development tools. The Strategic Planning Workshop pulls these together into a single process. This process takes the guesswork out of your business success.
Reducing Risk: Maximising Opportunity
Taking the guess work out of your business success is a step-by-step process which develops business owners skills to strategically plan their business. Good strategic planning enables businesses to take advantage of emerging markets, emerging trends, develop and launch new products. Strategic planning also enables companies to make structurally improvements to their business to improve its profitability, reduce costs and enhance productivity.
Strategic planning workshop is a proven method of developing and implementing success see www.cowdenconsulting.com.
Strategy: Leadership Skills
Strategic planning creates a clear direction for a business take. Working on your business, not just another day in it, crating a sense of direction, for the whole team to take. Working on your business, from developing your WHY (Simon Sinek, the power of why) through to creating a strong sense of purpose and direction. Where you are going and why is a powerful outcome from a s strategic planning workshop.
Secondly for leaders the ability to discuss their personals goals and ambitions in an environment which allows open discussion and development of those linked to their business is a real focus for personal leadership skill development.
The third leadership outcome from a strategic planning workshop is the forward plan of where the business is going. That creating of a clear focus supported by detailed action plans moves the whole team forward as one.
Slideshare of Strategic Planning Workshop
Click the link below to begin the slideshow to learn the fundamental skills and how to undertake a strategic planning workshop.
Leadership is all about VISION
Leadership IS all about Vision
Successful leadership is about having a clear vision. A vision is a is a mental picture of what you want your business to be at some point in the future. It is a realistic aspiration. That vision gives a business a clear focus and a long-term direction, and it can stop a business heading in the wrong direction.
Great leadership is about planning your business using business planning tools to match their ambitions to the opportunities in their market. Without a vision, businesses often fall into short-term annual plan, rather than long-term sustainable entities.
Creating a Vision
Successful business owners step back to work on their business not in their business. Looking at where they are going and why. A vision is an essential element in a leaders toolkit in communication with all stakeholders and employees. It is about being more than just a product or turnover. A good vision must combine not only an aspiration but elude to the values of the business.
Good visions also aspire to where the business will provide value to customers in the future. What are the opportunities within your market and sector over the next few years. Business Planning is a process of assessing options using tried and tested business planning tools, which provide robust and accurate options for business owners to grow their business successful.
Leadership is all about VISION from Richard Gourlay
Content Strategy: The future of marketing
The future of marketing is all about inbound marketing: Content strategy
If you can see a trend you have missed it!
It’s a complete shift not just an add-on
Pace of change is outstripping understanding
Content Strategy also creates confusion.
Dialogue NOT monologue
The Content Strategy Process
- Listening – Online is now the first port of call for 78% of web users.
- Creating – Great content that answers need and demonstrates expertise.
- Engaging – Is about being talked about and developing a dialogue with audiences
- Transforming – Is about continual engagement, moving them from suspects to purchasers
- Growing – Requires creating perpetual momentum developing new and developing loyalty
The strategy needs to be explained better
A good business starts with the end in mind: have clear objectives.
A good business starts with the end in mind: have clear business objectives.
Vision
Having a vision is vital to be successful in the long term, but having objectives will ensure you get you there. Clear milestones for everyone inside your company, top to bottom are the essential component of a successful company. Every successful company has clear goals, strategic ones the outrageous ones (global domination) through to achievable tactical objectives.
Objectives
Setting Objectives
The benefits of setting objectives:
Remember SMART criteria to define attributes of good objectives:
SMART criteria include:
The TOP TWELVE Business Planning Mistakes
The TOP TWELVE Business Planning Mistakes
The business-planning process is in itself a very worthwhile pursuit, they take a lot of effort and resource. A business plan’s primary purpose is to convey an idea with a view to achieving a specific goal, most typically in securing funding.
What makes a good business plan is less clearly defined.
Always remember that a business plan needs to be tailored to its target audience. If you have different audiences you will need to be able to flex your plan to that audiences specific needs. That means shaping it, edit it and amending it to achieve your objective.
Business planning is a vital activity for any business to succeed.
1. Lack of Viable Opportunity
- What is the problem which people will pay to have solved?
- Does your solution solve this issue for a specific target market?
- Why would someone buy your solution over someone else’s?
- Why are the benefits of your offering so compelling?
- Can you reach that target market with a compelling message quickly and directly?
2. Unbelievable / Unsupported Financial Numbers
3. No Accessible Route(s) to Market
All opportunities are only prospective ones without evidence that the target market can be accessed profitably, this is a big cliff to fall over.
4. Executive Summaries Which Aren’t
5. Over Estimating Turnover
6. Absence of Clear Objectives
I could have put this pitfall at number one very easily. What is the main purpose of the plan?
- Why investors should investing in this business rather than anywhere else?
- When will they recoup their initial investment and how and when it can be realised?
- What is their expected return on investment?
- How the company has managed all aspects of risk?
- Is the investment merely cash or do they need to bring other assets such as expertise to the table?
7. Non-Existent Cashflow Management
8. Non existent Management Teams
Throwing a few CV’s into a business plan does not create a delivery team. Likewise a generic organisational chart with missing pieces and To Be Confirmed (TBC) is not going to inspire confidence with investors to part with their cash.
Entrepreneurs can often sell an idea but they do not always inspire they can select a balanced team of people with the right skill mix, from the financial management to key leadership roles and the right operational team to deliver your ambitious plan.
Having a structured management team with operational structures is essential for success. Track records matter, as much as having clear roles and responsibilities laid out in delivering the operational plan which underpins the business plan.
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