In strategy there are two essential decisions to make. What to do and what not to do. Both impact what makes your strategy your strategy. It’s curious really, because strategy is often in the things you decide not to do.
For example, perhaps your company is capable of offering 20 different services and you reason that the more you offer the more you could sell. Sound simple and logical? But what if you applied the reverse logic to this strategy by deciding that fewer offerings would allow you to focus on what you do best and place heavier marketing dollars and resources of staff time behind these fewer services? Would this increase your overall impact and drive higher revenues? Let’s look at one other reality.
Information Overload
Balance your information against your target market needs – today the information overload is profound. A simple Google search of communications produces 855,000,000 page results! On page one you will find www.Wikipedia.com and www.Worldwidelearn.com and the IEEE Communications Society at www.comsoc.org and seven other major websites specifically addressing communications. Fairly easy to see how difficult it is for a communications company to get noticed. Obviously, you need to do something else than just talk about your company’s communications capabilities. To help you decide what strategy might work best for your company here are a few guidelines to help you in your planning:
Be focused. Whatever your company can provide world-class customer services support for should be the measure of what you offer. Your capacity to service your customers is the single-most important thing you can do short of offering world-class products and services. Another reason is how people acquire information is changing. Microsoft recently reported that 70% of PC search tasks are completed in one week and in one hour using mobile search. Given the stats it’s clear that knowing what to place on the screen and what not to place has never been more important.
Be quick. Have you ever listened to a really long PowerPoint Presentation and concluded that you could have given the same presentation in half the time or less? Happens all of the time. It’s not better to go on and on! It’s far better to know what your audience needs to know, what they would like to know, and deliver just that.
Be logical. If you have a set of local market customers why worry about what’s happening throughout the United States? Auto/Life/Home Insurance agents understand this strategy the best. Look at their marketing. It’s almost always focused on their local market because they are taught from day one it’s about making a positive impact in their local geography. Their contracts and agreements are written with 95% signing within an easy drive of their local office. Your specific strategy should work the same way by reflecting where your customers are located.
The implications of these three simple strategies can easily mean the difference between a successful versus an unsuccessful strategic program. Knowing what to turn on and what to turn off are at the heart of these strategies. If you have others you have used successfully let us know.
