Lots of people love to rush into strategic “planning” or “thinking” sessions.
And, they usually do so without putting much thought into where their focus should be.
Let’s not do that.
Here are 10 areas that you need to focus on and think about before you take the first step in any strategic thinking or planning session.
1. Know Your Value:
Everything you should do on a strategic level has to begin with your value.
That means you need to focus on the value you create or want to create for your clients and prospects.
Without value, you have absolutely nothing.
2. Who really is your customer?
Do you know who your buyer is?
That’s your customer!
The buyer may be buying something to share with someone else, to learn, or whatever.
But the person that is paying, that is your customer.
Make sure you know who that person is.
3. Let’s think about reaching these customers
When you consider your value and you consider who your customer is…then you need to always keep those two things in mind because you want to understand how you reach your customers.
This means that every advertising and marketing effort has to be directed around talking about your value to the people that are likely to buy from you.
Nothing else.
4. How are we going to take this strategic plan from thinking to doing?
One of the big failures in any organization’s strategic planning efforts comes right at the moment when you go from thinking to doing.
From the outset, you need to consider how you are going to move thinking to doing.
5. What outcomes are you going to measure your efforts against?
Tactics are easy.
You can always find a way to justify spending time on solving some easily noticed problem or putting out the latest fire.
But where is that really going to get you?
You can’t just solve problems.
You must spend time looking at opportunities and measuring your actions against specific outcomes.
6. What are you going to do when circumstances change?
How are you going to deal with change?
How are you going to approach things when the market shifts?
What will you do when something goes wrong?
7. Vision
You need to put your strategic plan in the context of the vision you have for your business.
If you don’t have a vision, you don’t really have much to hang your strategy on.
So make sure you know and explain how your business or organization is going to change your market and your customers.
How will your work improve people’s lives?
8. Leadership
How are you going to lead this strategy from plan to implementation to change?
How wed are you to the vision of your organization?
How much are you prepared to endure?
9. New markets
Are you ready to tackle new markets?
You don’t have to be ready to jump on those immediately, but you do need to always have them in the back of your mind.
If one presents itself, have you got a plan for it?
10. Ideal markets
What does your ideal customer look like?
What about your ideal company?
Going back to the top: what does your buyer really look like?