Strategy does not need to be complicated

In graduate school, one of the instructors (a business person, not a professor) told us something I have never forgotten. He said that business was relatively simple and amounts to this: Find a need, fill the need, and collect a check. Then he added: Don’t screw it up in the middle because most business owners screw it up.

As we begin this New Year it would be prudent to re-examine your current strategy and determine if it is still valid and true. Business is continually evolving and changing and the strategy you started 2020 with may not be the same strategy that will generate a successful 2021.

As a business owner, your job is to understand what the customer is trying to accomplish and determine whether you can solve their problem, meet their need, or relieve their pain. The only thing that a business really gets paid for is the results from meeting customer needs.

1. Find the Need: The heart of good strategy is to find the need, pain, or problem your customer is experiencing. This is what the customer wants resolved. Business success is about solving your customers’ problems or relieving their pain. Very few customers will pay for solving a non-problem. Strategy is the intentional focus and alignment of resources to deliver maximum results and value for your customer. To understand what your customers need requires you to be actively communicating with them. Knowing what problem you are solving and how you will solve it is strategy.
2. Fill the Need and Collect a Check: Once you the business owner have determined the customers’ need, it is then necessary to organize your company in such a manner to meet the customers’ need in the most efficient and effective manner possible. The only thing you really get paid for are results from meeting needs and solving problems. It is necessary to organize your company to solve the customers’ pain or problems, and this demands flexibility and the ability to meet challenges head on. It may require you to reorganize your organizational chart to ensure you have the right individuals in the right seats creating maximum value for your customers.
3. Keep It Simple: Strategy can become complicated and difficult to implement if you make it that way. I suggest you avoid making strategy overly complicated so that you do not avoid working on it. Keep it as simple as possible so that anyone in the organization can understand the strategy and your customers can understand it as well.

If would like to discuss developing your strategy for your business to ensure a successful 2021, give us a call. 503-312-3145

http://www.garyfurrconsulting.com