An effective business strategy is the basis for a successful business in our over-communicated and

constantly changing markets. According to a McKinsey report, about 80% of large companies say

they have a strategy, but few have one. Mostly, they have goals, but goals — without a plan (a strategy) to achieve them

— are just wishes.

 

In a nutshell, this article is about how business strategies impact your success. Your business strategy

is your story, and it’s your story that creates buyers. So, your Strategy is the key to a

compelling story. Think Whole Foods, Dell Computers, or Netflix.

 

Once you have your Strategy and value proposition, you can create your marketing strategy,

which is how you tell your story.  If you are looking for ways to increase your revenues and profits?

Or make your competition irrelevant? Or build more value into your offering? You will want to read this article.

Why Business Strategies Are Critical To Your Success

Integrated business and marketing strategies are critical to your company’s success. However,

you have to start with your business strategy first. This article blog offers an overview of a business strategy and how to create a business strategy.  

Business strategies offer the critical tools you need to create value for your targeted audience or even reshape

your market if your market is not growing. Your business strategy is your story. Think Apple, Wal-Mart or Nivida.

Also, as the pace of change accelerates, it doesn’t matter what industry, market, or

niche you are in, you may need to stay agile and innovate your strategies or get left behind.

 Do You Have a Goal or a Clearly Defined Objective? Unfortunately, goals are essential aspirations,

but a goal without a strategy is simply a wish. To reach your goal, you need to turn that goal into a

single, reachable, and measurable objective. Then, you can create a strategy and pathway to achieve that objective.

 

This Strategy could be –in descending order–a corporate, business market, functional, or product strategy.

Then, focus and concentrate actions and resources against those objectives. You achieve what you focus on.

What Is An Innovative Strategy?

A brief description and example.

An innovative business strategy can be summarized as a clearly defined plan a person or team must

perform to achieve the company’s growth and future sustainable goals. While all innovation strategies are

different, they should outline your organization’s innovation activities and objectives to help you achieve them.  

The Harvard Business Review describes creating a strategy as determining how innovation will c

reate value for potential customers and ways to capture that value. Plus, which types of innovation to pursue?

Product designs must evolve to stay competitive, and innovation strategies must evolve as the environment changes.

Good business innovation strategies must be simple, straightforward, and easily understood by all participants.

You want everyone on the same page. And remember, if it is a product or marketing strategy,

your innovation strategy must sync with your overall business strategy.

If you maintain your traditional business strategy because “that’s the way you have always done it,

” that Strategy could get you in trouble sooner or later. Think Kodak and their inventions of

digital photography or Blockbuster’s unwillingness to give up their retail stores and go to streaming.

The Difference Between Tactics And Strategy  

These terms are not interchangeable.   

Strategy and tactics are very different, although they are often used interchangeably.

Strategies are solutions to problems (objectives) and refer to long-term objectives.

Tactics refer to the specific actions required to achieve those objectives.

Three Levels of Strategy That Drive Sales

The process is the same, but the three levels must be coherent.

 

Strategy has three levels: Corporate, business (units), and functional (departments).

Corporate: Senior management determines the company’s mission and long-term performance.

They guide decisions about growth, acquisitions, diversification, and investments.

Business:  These strategies integrate into the corporate vision but focus on specific companies.

They focus on turning business objectives into Strategy and how the business will compete in the marketplace.

Functional. These strategies determine how the functional departments like production,

marketing, R&D, H.R., and other departments will support the corporate and business Strategy.

The Key Elements Of Strategies That Drive Sales

The process of analyzing and creating a strategy 

Strategies vary in depth and complexity depending on their objective. The following are the critical

components of most strategies. There are many different ways to analyze and create a strategy.

For this article, I use a description and explanation from Professor Richard Rumelt’s book Good Strategy/Bad Strategy

that is easy to understand and use. It offers a simple understanding of a complex subject.  

One: Start with your vision, aggressiveness, and key objective or problem. This task may

be more complicated than you think because team members will have different ideas about

the critical issue or problem. You need to come to a consensus on the fundamental problem or opportunity.

 

Two: Diagnose the problem or obstacle that is preventing success. This research

will be extensive and include many types of analysis, such as SWOT analysis, market analysis,

potential customer analysis, competitive analysis, industry analysis, and much more. This analysis

also includes trends, opportunities, and potential issues that will or could impact the market positively or negatively.

I prefer the term diagnosis to research because the solution could be hidden anywhere,

so you don’t rely on just backward booking research like analytics. Yes, this does take time, but the return on your investment is huge!

A few examples are design and engineering (BMW), chain-link systems (Walmart stores), and

anticipation (Toyota and hybrid technology). Ignoring trends can also be harmful. Think Kodak or Blockbuster. 

    

Three: Insight and Innovation. Analyses look backward from yesterday’s data, which is necessary.

But, you also have to look forward to where the diagnosis can lead to creativity, insight, and innovation to solve the problem.

Our minds are wired for creativity; many techniques help create “out-of-the-box ideas.” There are

many creative techniques, and we cover those in our Insigt/Innovation articles in the ClickVisor Insight/Innovation module. 

 How does insight happen? Insight” feels right”. It’s truth self-evident. The flash of insight is just

that (ie. Sam Walton saw stores as nodes in a logistics system rather than individual stores.

Store rivals that failed to achieve new insights were put off balance, striking at the edges rather than at the center of strength.)

Insights do not automatically awaken at our call. They can’t be guaranteed, but they can be aided.

The key source of design insight is a clear diagnosis of the structure of the challenge, especially looking at:  

1. persistence, 

2. Analogy (examples and lessons of others)

3. Point of view (search more broadly) perspective

4. Making explicit assumptions 

5. Asking why and 

6. Recognizing your unconscious constraints.

Focusing on the problem — looking only at a part but in more detail — can make part of it more transparent and easier to deal with.

Four: The Guiding policy. The guiding policy evaluates and decides which innovative

ideas you will use from the many ideas and concepts created in the insight/innovation process.

You have to decide what the company will do and what it will not do because no company has

unlimited time, talent, and financial resources to do everything. So you will have to make some

difficult decisions. However, your choices will jump-start your company in the right direction.

 Five: Coherent actions. You can’t stop once you have defined your guiding policy.

You must take the coordinated actions required to carry out the guiding policy. 

These actions have to be integrated with your Strategy and are what give your strategy power.

If monitored and measured, these actions will also validate your Strategy or give you the

information you need to make adjustments and changes. They help you achieve the result you want.

   Seven Benefits of Your Innovative Strategy

Significant benefits of having an innovative strategy to drive sales.

 

Think about this. What if you didn’t have a strategy and were making decisions 

based on impulse? How would you compete in the marketplace if you needed a strategy?

Answer: Having a strategy is critical to a company’s success. Following are some of the benefits you 

will enjoy doing and keep you motivated because you will be building the results you want.  

 

 One: Creates A Competitive Advantage. An innovative strategy enables you to improve every

aspect of your business model. Your Strategy allows you to maximize your resources, reduce unnecessary

costs, improve your value proposition, and create a competitive advantage that would be difficult for the competition to copy. 

 

Two:  Improves Your Financial Success. A strategy requires you to review your costs and

eliminate any unnecessary charges. It also requires you to look for ways to enhance your

offering, add premium pricing, create new offerings, or even enter new markets.

 

Three: Enables You To Make Better Decisions. Because you are analyzing your

current situation and creating a vision for the future, You will use your experience and

critical and creative thinking skills to broaden your perceptions of the company, industry,

markets, products, and services. This type of analysis will enable you to make better decisions.

    

Four: Helps Build Your Distinctive and Memorable Brand. Because of all your work

in preparing and creating your Strategy, you will know who you are and your audience. 

 

Five: Plan For Today And The Future. To create a strategy, you must identify the key

steps to reach your goals. This plan requires you to define and evaluate your company and your

offering (value proposition’s) strengths and weaknesses to determine what, if anything, has to improve or be eliminated.

It also helps you plan and allocate resources more efficiently and anticipate resource requirements

needed in the future. You will have to challenge some entrenched assumptions to do this.

 

Six: Improves Your Organization And Processes. A strategy helps you organize the company

to support your values and help you reach your goals. It can get your entire organization

on board and focused on helping execute the tasks needed to reach your goals. 

This focus is vital because the execution of your Strategy is as important as the Strategy itself.

Poor execution — rather than the Strategy — is the primary reason a plan fails.

You need all team members aboard and sold on the Strategy.

 

Seven: It gives Management Control and Reduces Risks. A strategy gives

you control all activities that affect your goals and let you measure progress. 

 

Conclusion

About 80 percent of companies believe business strategies are essential, and many believe

they have a strategy. Unfortunately, few do. What they have are mission statements and goals. 

But goals are broad aspirations and wishes unless you have an innovative strategy to define

a pathway to achieve those goals. An innovative strategy describes how the company

will capture new or additional ways to create value and which innovations to pursue.

 

There are also three innovative strategy levels:

corporate, business, and functional (department responsibilities).

 

A business model canvas is a conceptual structure that explains the viability of the business through

the company’s essential nine components. Companies use many different business models

—many of which you are familiar with – like E-commerce, subscription, and direct sales.

Business models are essential for every new and established business and must be updated

with market changes and customer values. If you do, you could avoid future trends or challenges.  

 

The way to approach business model innovation depends on the company’s situation. Does it have

a significant problem preventing it from achieving its objective, or does it need to break out of

the competitive market or the company’s market is slowing down, and it needs to find new buyers?

 

In short, it creates a competitive advantage, improves financial success, enables leadership to make

better decisions helps build your brand for the future, enhances the function

of your organization, gives management better control, and reduces risk.

 

 The First Five Steps To Create Your Business Strategy Journey. 

   

Go through the five steps below and begin to question and probe for answers to each question.

Preparing an overview of how you will assemble your business plan will take some time. This process will be time

well spent. On the other hand, set a time limit for getting this done. Take all the benefits that result from a business strategy. 

 

Step One: Establish a plan to keep up with the constant pace of change in your marketplace.

Involve your team. If you have three people, you will get three different answers to the questions and other responses to future suggestive ideas.

It would be best if everyone were on the same page when you executed your proposed Strategy. 

  

Step Two: Determine the overall objective of your future Strategy. How aggressive do you

want to be? Do you have a specific problem to solve or an opportunity you want to achieve?

Are you looking for an incremental or radical program?

 

Step Three: Go through the first three steps in creating your Strategy.

Define your objective – which has to be the most critical one, achievable and measurable.

Diagnose the problem/opportunity– you only need information that helps you solve the problem; you don’t have to write an encyclopedia.

Step Four: Determining your general policy. This step is difficult because it means saying “no” often.

You have a concept you want to implement and limited time, talent, and money to do everything, 

so saying no to additional ideas is challenging. Then, put your plan together on how you will execute this Strategy.

 

Step Five: Monitor and measure the results of your programs and adjust as often as necessary.

This strategy program is a work in progress, so there will be many starts, stops, and rewrites.

 

Stay positive and believe in what you are doing, and you get what you focus on.