StartingOverNow.com - Seven Questions Essential for Business Strategy

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The Seven Questions Essential for Business
Strategy

Answer these seven simple questions and you will have a strategy
that will not fail you.

1. What is the purpose of your business? You should be able to
recite your purpose in one sentence. The purpose of your
business should be personally rewarding to you. It should bind
together all of your action plans and activities. It is a guide for when
you may be slipping away from your core goals. It is the difference
you make in the world. It is why you exist.

2. Who is your customer? Be specific. Who must your product or
service satisfy to achieve results? Is it men or women? What is
their age? Where do they live? What race? What professions or
trades? Who do they trust? Where do they go for fun? What causes
do they support? Where do they spend time? Who are their
friends? What is their income? What is important to them? What
are their immediate goals? What are their five and ten year goals?

3. What will prompt your customer to act? You must know what
your customer cares about if you want to meet their needs. But just
because they say they care does not mean they will be inspired to
act. You have already defined who you think your customer is
under #2. You have defined that by your estimation. But you cannot
truly identify what they want until you ask them directly. Create a
survey and ask them some non-threatening demographic
questions to validate who they are but also, what they would like to
see in your product or services. Frame the questions with action
statements such as, “Would you purchase _______ if it did
________?”

Surveys can be given in your place of business, in the mail with a
postage paid return envelope, through online posts and forums,
via an email request, or via a free electronic survey on
SurveyMonkey.com. After you do this you will better be able to
identify new markets you might explore based on the
demographics of your audience. If you find that your clients live in
the suburbs, focus their time and energy on their children, and are
mostly women, you might begin networking in women’s
professional organizations, visiting online forums for women,
giving free lectures in suburban communities on something that is
of value to the family.

4. What is your niche? Why you and not your competitor? What do
your customers or clients need more of in order to get/be
something they desire: more money, more thin, more time, more
freedom, more fulfillment, more customers, more business, more
friends, more what? Don’t look at your business in terms of
features and benefits. Consider what would happen if your
business did not exist. Will it matter? What will make your
prospects turn only to you for your product or service?

5. How will you measure your success? Business plans, grant
applications, and other financial qualifying documents require you
to show exactly how you will measure your success for a reason. If
you do not know what you are aiming for, how will you know you
have made a difference in meeting your purpose? It must be
quantifiable. Not “We will have succeeded if we have more
business.” More like, “Within the three months periods we will
track the number of overall customers, the number of new
customers, the amount of overall business, and the amount of
business from new customers.”

6. What are your goals and plan? If you have spent time on the
above four questions, the answer to this question should be clear.
Your goals should be in direct alignment with the purpose of your
business, targeted to fill a need for your ideal customers, and
evoking a call to action from your prospects so that the results are
measurable. Your plan is the action you will take to meet your
goals. Be flexible. The goals and plan should be able to be altered
midstream depending on the results you encounter.

For free resources on setting goals go to the Articles and Tips
Sheets page.

7. How will you celebrate? It is important for you and your team to
celebrate your successes. This will instill the realization that
strategy does pay off and that the experience of a well-designed
and executed plan is worth repeating.

Remember hope is not s strategy. Start now!

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Get Mary Lee’s tips on "Goals - Four Goal Setting Strategies that
Rock" and other free resources at Articles and Tip Sheets.

Mary Lee Gannon is the president of StartingOverNow.com –
Creating Productivity Solutions for People and Organizations.
Mary Lee is a graduate of The Duquesne University Professional
Coaching Program and an alumnus of the 2010 Harvard Medical
School and McLean Hospital Coaching in Medicine & Leadership
Conference. Her personal turnaround came as a stay-at-home
mother, with four children under seven-years-old, who endured a
divorce that took she and the children from the country club life to
public assistance from where within a short time she worked to the
level of CEO. Services include: Workshops, Meeting Facilitation,
Coaching, Webinars, Speaking and Management Consulting.
Areas of Specialty: Management Consulting / Strategic Planning /
Board Development / Public Relations / Meeting Facilitation / Goal
Setting / Leadership / Time Management / Life/Career Transition.
Her book "Starting Over - 25 Rules for When You've Bottomed Out"
is available in bookstores and at with online book sellers. Sign up
for Mary Lee’s Fr ee Executive Coaching e-newsletter