Do you want to make sure your business has long term success?
A business manifests to its full potential thanks to its business strategy. It’s the set of plans and actions, aimed to achieve the pre-determined goals set for the business to succeed. The theory behind may sound simple, but executing it is what makes it challenging.
Because of this, developing a solid business strategy is an important factor that businesses and startups must consider. You need to take note of certain areas when developing a business plan. Today, we will look at each of these areas, and walk you through some tips to help you build your very own business strategy.
1. Identify Core Values, Objectives, and Goals
Setting up your business plan requires you to identify the key points that define your company. In this case, you need to identify the core values that make your business distinct from the rest. Take note of your vision and mission while working on this aspect.
A solid business development strategy will answer the following questions:
– What are you planning to achieve with this business?
– What are the services or products that you wish to offer to your customers?
Defining these aspects will help you shape your company’s framework. This will also be a factor in noting the company’s purpose. As well as the goals that you wish to achieve in both the short term and the long term.
2. Assess Your Strengths and Weaknesses
Once you have those identified, you need to look at what your company can do. This is where a SWOT analysis can come into play. It allows you to note the numerous factors at work in your company.
While running the analysis, your strengths and weaknesses are the internal factors that you can control as a business leader. Meanwhile, the opportunities and threats are the external factors beyond your control that would have a bearing on your success.
These factors could include your cash flow or your assets that you can use for your business. Human resources are also part of these factors, allowing you to have the number of teams ready to take on the task. Waymaker’s Diagnostic helps businesses assess these strengths and weaknesses and helps you identify the one, two or three things that when focussed on, will effectively shift the needle on your business.
3. Assemble Your Team
If you’re a startup or Solopreneur on limited capital, this step may not be front and centre in your mind. Regardless, it’s important to know that as you scale your business, these factors will eventually come into play. So it’s worth thinking about how you setup your business strategy so building out your teams in the future is a natural progression.
As you grow for instance, you would have one team focused on marketing whilst you might have another team focused on manufacturing.
Once developed, make sure to let the team leaders do their job. Micromanaging them may prove counter-productive and cause their morale to drop, slowing down productivity and everyday tasks.
Instead, delegate your tasks to team leaders that you can trust. This is where upper management and middle management come to play. You also have your functional operators working on the on-site duties of a business.
Lastly, and most importantly – think about the the experience you want your teams and employees to have when they work at your company? More than ever, Employee Experience is a significant part of your company’s success.
4. Research the Target Market
You also need to know the target market for your product or service. This requires a lot of research to identify your niche, and know how to reach and appeal to your target audience.
On top of this, also look at the immediate needs and the situation within your field. Pay attention to the trends and work with the information that you collect.
When in doubt, you can also look at the other brands for inspiration. In this case, look at how they conducted their market research and how their success story went. It can give you insight and ideas on what to do.
5. Know Your Competition
In line with what’s above, remember that you most certainly have competition in this market. You can use them as inspiration by taking a look at the business strategy examples that they set for the field. This is also a sign that your business strategy needs to stay competitive to stay on top.
One way to approach this is to go for a market that has little to no competition. This should let you dominate it long enough that you can develop your brand and establish it. This also gives you an advantage that your competitors would have a trickier time when they enter a market space that you dominate in.
6. Set a Roadmap for Your Business Strategy
Seeing what your company has with its strengths and weaknesses, you can now set up your plans. This time, you can set the plans involved in your business strategy in detail. To start, set up your strategic goals and have them laid out in realistic time intervals.
While you can set your teams to push forward with their best performance, you also need to remain grounded with realistic goals. Consider using the SMART mnemonic to help you set up goals for your business strategy.
Strategic alignment is one of the key factors to your success. Keep this in mind as you set up your business strategy and the other contingency plans within your business plan.
7. Maintain Your Focus
Once you have your goals set, you need to maintain focus. Once a business identifies its role in the marketplace, it has to stay faithful to that strategy. More so when it discovers and develops a business strategy around it.
This maintains the brand identity of your business. Changing it may result in your core business losing its strategic focus. By keeping focus, you have better chances at succeeding.
Building a Business Strategy Involves Planning and Focus
When you set up your business strategy, you need to know your priorities. It boils down to using your strengths and knowing your weaknesses as you push towards your goals. Over time, you will see your efforts pay off as your products become a recognizable piece of everyday life.
Waymaker is a unique platform that can helps your business achieve strategic alignment. Whether you are a business owner looking for clear tools that help you visualise and then manage alignment within your business, or a Coach or consultant looking for great tools to help the businesses you work with. We have a solution for you. Check out our product offerings to see just how easy it can be to achieve strategic alignment in your organization.
