What Makes Strategic Selling Successful

Strategic Selling

A good business is based upon a clearly defined business strategy. Strategy is the central or macro plan for any business. It the fundamental overarching plan which everyone inside the business is pulling towards. A business with a clear strategy in place knows where it is aiming for in its market sector. That clarity and purpose enables it to build a culture to support that. A key element of a successfully designed business strategy is that it translates into a clear sales strategy. That is the definition of successful strategic selling.

Sales Strategy What is it?

A sales strategy sets out clearly what the business intends to achieve and how. Rather than just setting out a simple cold and unexplained turnover goal, a raw number, it defines the market you are in. A coherent sales strategy combines a set of strategic metrics which build to a complete set of outcomes. A sales strategy is a clear direction to take for all business activities. It identifies: –

The structure and make-up of the market you want to succeed within.
Key major market drivers – what’s driving market’s existence and development.
Market dynamics – what’s setting the pace of change and evolution of a market
The profile of the major market players and their position in that market.
And ultimately the optimum customer profile for your target audiences.

Strategic selling is a sales framework that firstly identifies the market structure that you are operating within. While that sounds obvious, it provides that clarity of purpose that involves everybody within the entire company Ensuring that everyone is pulling in the same direction at the same time, a clear sales strategy unites a company behind the strategy. A sales strategy is not just for the sales team, it is for every department to be aligned with. It enables a sales team to build companywide cross-department relationships with multiple-decision makers in a potential customer’s organisation. It creates a buyer-orientated approach that focuses on the value the entire solution provides to the whole customer. This contrasts to transactional selling which focuses on just the product itself.

Strategic Selling in B2B Environments

Strategic selling it is particularly effective in B2B sales environments. This is where there are often multiple decision-makers coming from different departments that engage with the company. It moves selling from a salesperson’s role to a company wide responsibility.

Strategic selling aligns the company towards the entire customer’s needs and expectations. An average customer decision typically involves seven people, all from different parts of a business. Each potential customer comes with a set of unique specific needs, budgets, and decision-makers all in the mix. That’s why a well-defined sales strategy is essential to target and support winning over all the decision makers within target company.

Long-term Success

Strategic selling is focused on creating long-term, mutually beneficial relations with target customers. It breaks down complex sales processes into simple actionable steps which evolve as the partnership with each client develops. While traditional selling focuses on the narrow and immediate benefits of the product, strategic selling’s emphasis is on the complete value it provides to the customer over a long period.

Strategic selling is mainly applicable in B2B organisations where there is a high value stream relationship. Often there are multiple decision-makers and an evolving relationship or partnership between the two companies. Selling strategically is therefore a business culture tailoring the product and or service that gives the optimum solution to all these problems.

Strategic Selling Approach

A strategic selling approach requires a good understanding of the market and who the key players. That knowledge also identifies who will resonate most and align with your brand best. This market alignment is fundamental to strategic success. Prioritising and focusing resources on target customers and their value streams. Where a company can add value is where they might positively respond and engage with you. It is an essential to understand behaviour traits, and as identified above, what is driving their sector within a market. This is where customer competitor assessments identifies opportunities for possible company entry. Even if it is no clear opening or immediate need for your product entry.

A company market entry strategy is an approach that focuses on building alignment rather than peddling product. We align with and understand the target client landscape and strategic challenges they are facing before trying to sell. Learning how we can work with them to resolve them, putting us in the driving seat in their solution search.

By developing a tailored and even joint solution, we skew or even actively remove the competition from the equation. The most obvious point is where a target customer wants to move into a new venture, or market area. That opens an opportunity to develop an entry strategy with a partner. This can be undertaken either as a joint venture or as their preferred partner. This locking in is the most obvious model. For strategic selling it can at any level of development of the target customers business evolution. Whether that be scaling up, service evolution, cost reduction, adding new value; the opportunity is there if a strategic selling culture exists.

Classic Drivers Customer Change

Growth: The target customer is essentially aware of the desire to grow within a market or segment. Where their existing model is not suitable or competitive enough, so they will look at alternative models to get growth within their market.

Problem Solving: The target customer has an issue, or an underperformance with their existing model. This is where they maybe open to new ideas and solutions. This is where they are researching how do something different to remove know pain points.

Passive Observation: Here the target customer does not see a performance gap between what they desire and the reality, but they are aware that change is happening and potential for their position to become eroded opens doors for possible exploration of new approaches.

Key Elements of Strategic Selling

The key elements of strategic selling start with developing a strategic mindset by the leadership team. That clarity of purpose and position within a market, typically a developed or mature market, where there is a structured market with major players either in place or emerging. Without that foundation stone strategic selling is unlikely to be achievable.

Win / Win / Win Culture

Strategic selling identifies the triple win culture (Win / Win / Win), the customer wins, you win and the relationship between the two companies win. This triple bottom line is at the heart of strategic selling. It builds multi-level relationships across the target customer, a collaborative sales process involving identifying and removing the customer’s pain points with them and finally uncovering the real value of the relationship of the partnership with them.

Decision Making Unit and Process

The second key element of strategic selling is that it involves working throughout the entire decision-making unit (DMU). This shift moves selling from a 121 narrow transactional engagement, the traditional selling model, to one where the entire DMU are identified and actively engaged throughout the sales process. That really means not just for the sales period but as part of developing a long-term relationship with them.

Understanding that while other stakeholders may not be actively engaged in buying but are in the decision-making process of whom the business works with, and what criteria buying decisions are made upon is vital for successful strategic selling.

The second element here is for any target customer to know their Decision-Making Process (DMP) how do they buy? No two companies have the same process, in steps, time and people engagement.

If strategic selling is going to be successful then it’s not just about the people but the process they go though, step-by-step and language they use which you need to know inside out. How do they score and decide? Who has what influence over whom and when?

In simple transactional selling the decided decides but in complex B2b sales there are multiple voices and different levels of power and influence which the decider must engage with and respond to. If many cases the decided is there to sign-off on a decision rather and make it.

Customer Centric Approach

This then leads to the third key element of strategic selling, implementing a customer centric approach. Meeting the unique needs of that customer, tailoring existing processes and sales approaching aligned with the customer priorities and needs to enable them to achieve their goals. The final part of this element is an on-going relationship. Not just a engage when selling approach which is the definition of transactional selling. Strategic selling continually engages and aligns with the customer. This is why it works most effectively with emerging and maturing markets and large players within it.

The Personalised Sales Strategy for each Target Customer

Strategic selling’s key output is the personalised solution which is presented over time to the target customer. It highlights firstly good alignment between the two companies and the measurable impact it will make to the target customer enabling them to achieve their short and long-term goals.

The win/win/win mentality should be at the heart to the solution, identifying how your USP’s could with your approach will solve and add value throughout the target customers’ business.

Strategic Selling Solution

Strategic selling solution focus’s a whole company approach tailored to the target customers’ needs, addressing all stakeholder concerns and how you will support the customer throughout the relationship. In complex B2B markets an effective solution highlights the key must have elements that the target customer has identified to you. While also focusing on the ongoing relationship and the next stage development of the relationship.

That move from a transactional relationship to strategic selling involves the whole team engagement and long-term often multiple project and product development. This creates a strategic alignment between the two companies develops within a market segment. An effective solution highlights these elements and draws in the entire strategy not just the immediate product or service in question.

Strategic Selling Summary

Strategic selling is a clear business strategy. It relies upon developing a culture of long-term relationship building with large complex companies in maturing markets. Targeted customers ideally need to be in the early adopter or early majority element of the market where the value-added elements can be easily identified.

Engaging with target customers must be undertaken throughout the company. Not just at the buyer selling point but from top down and throughout the decision-making unit. Identifying not just immediate needs, but longer-term strategic goals and target customer development plans, identifying stakeholder needs and value requirements in the partnership.

Once this is undertaken the presentation back to the target customer must reflect strategic goals as well as immediate quick wins. This is most effectively when seen as a multiple step or phase building programme, often by finding the door opener and trust builder before trying to move into the longer and more significant purchasing phases. Always focus on the value-added in the joint relationship and lifetime value which will out compete any transactional relationship that transactional competitors can offer.

Like to know more then get in touch with Richard Gourlay here.

In Business Growth is not always Good Growth!

Business Growth is not always Good Growth, it can be Bad!

For every business owner growth is the ultimate measure of success, except it isn’t! Not all growth is good growth, and bad growth can have significant negative consequences.

Growth is seen as THE measure of success in business. Leaders are measured by what they deliver in results, and growth is the simplest measurement to communicate. Headline results of increased turnover are always eye-catching news but may not be good growth. Turnover, for turnovers sake, is often the most dangerous result a leader can deliver. Growth sounds like a good result but not all growth is good.

When growth at any cost becomes the sole focus, then leaders open the pandori’s box for the wrong types of growth. Growth for growth’s sake is a high-risk business move. It sounds great as a headline but often masks what is really going on. The short-term benefits of rapid growth often come with long term consequences for any business. This is the difference between good growth and bad growth, which need to be clearly understood by owners and directors.

So, what is Bad Growth?

Bad growth is unsustainable. It’s a short-term grab that looks good but does significant long-term damage. Bad growth comes in many shapes such as:-

In grabbing market share: buying a low value contract to win a new customer, which reduces margin sets a trend to lower margins.
In opening the wrong type of customer: which pulls the business to somewhere outside its marketplace, stretching the brand into different unprofitable places.
Over rapid growth by buying market share: with a low-cost entry offer or product which stretches the company’s resources, from financial causing unnecessary debt, to brand stretch damaging brand value to customer and channel trust breakdown.

The outcome of bad growth is that it stretches and pulls the company in wrong direction. Pulling a company in a wrong direction, is short-term thinking. If it is recoverable will take time, money are human resources to correct short-term bad growth. But here’s the other key problem that bad growth creates. If we incentives and measure only the growth, then we reward the people who created that bad growth. By giving them rewards and incentives to do more of the same, feeding the bad behaviour. That creates an empowerment and acceleration off driving growth at any cost and at all costs.

Growth at any Cost

That growth at any, and all cost, becomes a mantra which often overriders all other business and brand metrics. The first casualty is margins which become eroded, followed by key areas such as investment in new innovative product is sacrificed for cash cows. That in turn leads to brand position erosion as the brand moves from where it was. Which is where its existing valuable customers want it to be. To a new market position, which results in its former customers moving away to new brands.

Causes and Solutions of Bad Growth

Bad growth is an outcome of poor leadership decision making. When directors, press the green button to go for growth at any cost they are the fundamental root cause of bad growth. Instead they should be developing a clear strategic plan for the business. Identifying a company’s its true value and long-term aspiration must to be laid out by its leadership team.

Clear guidelines of what the business and brand stand for is a must be defined. and protected Growth has impacts and good assessment of the full impact should always be made. If a business outgrows a market growth rate, then how is that being achieved, and what is the long-term impact on the company must be fully understood.

Bad growth is often cheap and easy, but destructive and expensive in the long-term. The classic phrase ‘there is no such thing as a free lunch’ should always be at the forefront of leaders minds. Bad growth takes the company in the wrong direction, moving it away from its market position, and most importantly away its existing loyal and valued customers.

Bad Growth Business Impact

As well as driving the company into wrong markets or short-term grab growth, bad growth often also has severe and significant internal impacts. Firstly, on the company’s values and its people motivators. Bad growth does not feel right to employees, demotivating good people and putting strains and stresses on systems and people as they are pulled in the wrong direction.

Often bad growth creates internal conflict as people and systems are set up for good growth in product development, operating systems and customer focused activities. Challenging these, or short circuiting them to override them for bad growth goals creates tension and disappointment, demoting and demotivating even the most loyal employees.

Growth is a complicated goal and rarely one where there is easy low hanging fruit. It’s not just about increasing sales or market size; it’s about building a resilient, sustainable, and innovative enterprise.

So What is Good Growth?

In business good growth is inextricably linked to a sustainable expansion strategy. It must be beneficial to all stakeholders within the business and to its external stakeholders especially its customers and channel partners. This holistic approach that considers the long-term impacts on the company, its employees, and customers. Good growth is led by a clear long-term strategy planning. It creates a steady increase in turnover and profit reflected in market impact of new product and brand position retention and enhancement.

Defining Good Growth

We can all see good growth after it has happened. We see more of the right type of customer for the business. They are spending more and are happy to buy more and more frequently. Happy customers come back and want more of both the same but also products and services which they want to a company to supply.

Good growth is where: –

Alignment is strong between all stakeholders: with shared values and brand perceptions work hand in hand in growth planning and delivery.
Good growth is sustainable: it is both manageable and self-sufficient in generating products and services which sustain the growth of the business.
Ultimately it creates long-term profitability: throughout the business, not short-term growth but long-term profits, such as shareholder value.

The signature of good growth are therefore sustainability, profitability, and alignment with the company’s core values and mission. Good growth reflects the inter-relationship of all these three factors. It’s a type of growth that supports and is supported by the company’s overall strategic plan.

Benefits of Good Growth

Good growth benefits the whole business. Not only does it support long-term sustainability It supports brand reputation, builds and develops customer loyalty, and motivates employees. Good growth is enhancing the businesses whole value as it fits within the brand values and adds to the whole of the business offering. Each off these three elements protects the business from bad growth drivers and practices.

Strategic Thinking

All decision making starts with leaders focusing on long-term strategic positioning, which comes from a clear vision and strategy. Good growth requires good leadership decision making skills, focused on looking at the whole picture and incentivising and motivating people on long-term strategic thinking. Typically, this is thinking out the business over timescales such as 3 to 5 years, depending upon market rate changes. This contrast with short-term grab thinking, which is often led by short-term grab bad growth habits of one year or less with motivators that reward or override big picture thinking.

Leaders who foster good growth are adaptable and responsive to market changes. Good growth leaders are open to innovation and learning. In bad growth situations, leadership are often rigid, do not listen to feedback from customers and employees that could prevent negative outcomes. The outcome is more important than how they got there.

Conclusion

Good growth balances opportunities with threats to the business. It focuses on the three key elements of alignment, sustainability and profitability. A good growth culture ensures it is aligned with all stakeholder and company needs. It is sustainable so it can be replicated without damage to the brand, its customers and its future and finally it makes money for the business and enhances shareholder value.

Don’t be led by people who over promise to grow your business, especially if they come from outside your sector or culture. If they don’t understand the sector and your market, they don’t understand good growth.

Richard Gourlay, experienced management consultant, leadership development and strategic advisor, director and NED to high growth companies. Author of book:- Strategy: The Leader’s Role by Richard Gourlay builds the skills which makes leaders successful in their business. #dumfries #galloway #scotland, #mentor, #castledouglas, #leadershipskills, #NED, #Director.

Turnaround Your Business: The Garden Rooms Case Study

Case Study a Garden Rooms business in Scotland

A Garden Room

Background

The owner of a Garden Rooms business in Scotland approached me to help turn his business around. Operating in a potentially growing market designing home garden rooms, such as offices, bedrooms and gyms while also still building home extensions. He was struggling to run these businesses, spending most time running around firefighting and dealing with unhappy customers.

Situation

The owner was trying to run too much at the same time, which put him under: –

Financial pressures: no real financial model and limited systems in place. With little cost management or operating and margins in place, putting continual pressure of the business’s finances and margin impacts.
Operational issues: with no operating systems in place each project ran differently, which lead to a wide range of quality and complaint issues, including legal disputes.
Quality issues: with staff firefighting onsite with suppliers to get components to site on time, impacting upon delivery times, production and cost and quality impacts.
People issues: of unhappy and unmotivated staff, no one really knowing what they were being asked to do and good staff leaving.
Ultimately there was little customer focus and significant firefighting, unfinished jobs with a long list of snagging issues to be resolved.

Our solution

Working with the key people we developed a clear business strategy and culture shift for the business, identifying the businesses core value proposition and a customer focused ethos.

This led to a complete process of change and focused team actions to re-invent the business around its core value proposition and improvement plans to redesign out all root cause issues within the business.

Following this process we then developed a customer process map. This identified every customer value added step and supported the customer through the entire process. With a new marketing strategy also in place we were able to improve: –

Customer engagement and acquisition which led to an improved Average Order Value (AOV) of 55% in one year.
Ownership of issues by frontline staff to get it right for the customer, reducing snagging and issues to a controlled minimum, with everyone pulling together.
The development of product improvement and a full product range to support customer retention and conversion, making the business the dominant player within the target market.

This enabled

We worked with the owner developing his business and his skills to lead his business more successfully, providing support and guidance throughout. This was supported by clear business planning with the owner with a full strategic and operational business plan in place.

Clear success goals shared with the team.
A forward annual business plan covering every aspect of the business.
Sales goal setting which supported and underpinned the financial plan.
A comprehensive financial and cashflow model to ensure the business is cash positive and profitable for the first time.
The owner was able to positively look at a trade exit strategy from this business.

Have a chat with Richard here now

The Growth of the Garden Rooms Scotland Business

The Growth of Garden Rooms Scotland

The Growth of Garden Rooms

2022 was a great year for Garden Rooms Scotland. A Dumfries success story, with business doubling over 2021 as more and more people look to add a garden room to their home. The success in 2022 was not a one off, the confirmed order book in January for 2023 alone is more than the turnover achieved in 2021.

That success is not just down to a great front of house team’s solution design mentality, or the construction team’s hard work in quality construction. Garden Rooms Scotland provides a whole business solution. So where is the growth for Garden Rooms coming from?

The growth comes not from just a great company but also from several major factors within a market. The growth for Garden Rooms Scotland is no different. For many established companies’ growth within the outdoor living space sector is significant and is here to stay. Well, at least for the next five years or so if all market projections are to be believed. Why garden rooms are growing, is not down to just one factor, but many inter-related factors which is why growth is not just a blip but a long-term trend for companies set up to maximise this growth market. In response Garden Rooms has built a business to meet that growth curve.

Rising Demand for Garden Rooms

By far the biggest driver for people buying a garden room is in response to the demand for dedicated work from home space. While 2020 may have been the year of remote working due to Covid, it was just the icing on the cake in growth for the garden room market as work from home became the new normal.

Demand for garden buildings went up by 500% between January and May 2021 at the height of the Pandemic. But it was not a Covid blip, but an emerging long-term trend. A recent TUC survey discovered that more than 38% of people in 2022 in the UK now work from home at least one day a week. By 2025, it is estimated that 70% of the workforce will be working remotely at least five days a month.

The work from home garden office, provides a separate “workplace” replacing the kitchen table worktop. It not only enables people who want to their Zoom conference call in private, but want a permanent workspace differing from their home life.

Modern buildings provide a series of tangible benefits over old refurbishments. From WIFI, heating and cooling, well insulated and functional design the space works for business people. Garden Rooms also provide a steppingstone to work but without the costly time and financial commute for many professional workers. Garden Room offices also provide a tranquil workspace, looking out at your garden, creating calm and relaxed workspace, within a few steps of your home.

Space to Add a Garden Room

In places like Dumfries and Galloway, Cumbria, and Northumberland there is also space around many homes. Not just in rural housing but also in towns where many homes until recently were built with sizable gardens and surrounding spaces. This creates options for owners to utilise their spare space for an additional living or work from home space, either as accommodation or for a dedicated activity, from yoga space, music room to art studio.

Diverse Outdoor Living

Another major factor for many people choosing to add an additional living space is that it adapts what people have saving them having to move to find extra space. “If only we had a …….” Is solved by installing a garden room. Just the cost of moving home is often as much as adding in a new room to an existing property. Creating a new modern living space within an existing home is also easier as recent planning restrictions have been amended to favour garden room addition.

Creating dedicated spaces within a garden also creates privacy and can bring a function to a garden as well as a focal point to a garden. Creating a separate functional space brings structure to a garden, adding new functionality to the entire living space without disturbing the existing home.

Cost Effective Extensions

Starting with the cost of renovation, which has risen our of all expectations, due to labour and materials, with materials alone having risen over 40% since 2020. This makes adapting an existing house now significantly more expensive than adding a garden room option. A comparable construction cost comparison makes an equivalent extension typically 25% more expensive than installing a garden room.

Coupled to that many older buildings have significant limitations in adaption. Think of old houses with thick load bearing walls, and limited internal room sizes and the attraction of a bespoke design with modern spacious living spaces, well insulated and quickly erected and the rationale for a garden room becomes self-evident.

Garden Rooms Solution

Designed and built in Dumfries at their dedicated joinery shop, Garden Rooms are designed to be built as modular units which are then constructed onsite. Bespoke design with innovative solutions Garden Rooms solves people’s living space challenges. Using clever solution such as ground screw foundations and modular construction saves time and money for customers. This makes the time on site shorter and with low impact on existing gardens and customer’s lives.

With two showrooms providing a huge range of garden room solutions, customers can visualise and select the size and features they value most in their new garden room. For 2023 Garden Rooms has added new products and features to extend the range and scale of what can be offered. Garden Rooms is a business going the right direction in the right market at the right time.

To learn about how Richard Gourlay supports and develops successful businesses then contact him by clicking here

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 their 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 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

A clear business plan is the result of a process. It starts with thinking, then writing it down. That commitment itself is a sense-check, it creates a reality and makes the writer accountable for their thoughts. By writing down your business plan a leader takes a dream and begins to make it a reality. Others can see, critically evaluate, and judge the business idea and review the opportunity the plan intends to address. By doing this a business idea is viewed in the round, looking not only at the idea, but the actuality of what needs ot happen across all busienss area functions to turn the idea into reality.

“In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.” – Robert Heinlein

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

What Makes a Great Brand (Part 2)

A Clear Brand Strategy

In what makes a great brand (part 2, click here to read part 1 if you missed it), we will look at what makes great brands’ stand out from others.

Being clear and precise is vitally important in the company’s messages for a brand to succeed. A strong undiluted brand message must enthuse internally but must also consistently connect with customers through all touch points. For great examples look at Innocent, Dorset Cereals or Apple as classic examples of touch point engagement. They also demonstrate a clear story delivered with passion about who they are what they do and why they matter.

This focused and consistent message is not just a marketing message but an ingrained set of values which consumers buy into with passion. These brands not only position themselves as premium players in their fields and earn more but they also continuously find new ways to spread their key messages to customers, they have a clear brand strategy to achieve it.

Everyone Must Live The Brand

Another vital aspect of any brand success is that the people within that brand demonstrate what they preach. They live that lifestyle, support the values and aspirations associated with a brand and contribute to its success. It is their lifestyle, it is a part of the way they and their brand do business. This is something I learned at my first full time job at the then privately owned outdoor clothing brand Berghaus. Everyone lived and loved the brand.

Great brands go beyond the logo, to understand its real value to existing customers and also to tomorrow’s customers. Whether it is a family run local shop or a global supermarket chain, great brands position themselves so they develop and hold a market position to develop long-term success.

Great Brands Create Uniqueness

Great brands also develop their own uniqueness. Not just in the product or service but the whole package in how they do business. There needs to be not only consistency but the brand hand writing and value on how they do it. The best brands always develop singular simple signals for customers, cutting through jargon to create clarity without patronisation their audiences. That strategy creates and supports a strong company culture, which the leadership team must then sustain. Successful leadership teams revitalise that culture by refreshing their vision to focus on where they are taking their organisation.

Vision to make change n business by Richard Gourlay

For brands to succeed in today’s global markets then these golden rules have never been more important to businesses, as consumers have never had so much information, but if you follow these simple rules of brand success you can develop and maintain a great business.

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If you want to develop your company’s brand and are looking for some advice on developing your company, its marketing, its sustainable competitive advantage then contact us at Cowden to see how we can assist you, or read more about us in this blog or at @richardgourlay or contact Richard Gourlay