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Strategy, Marketing, Teams

Robert Craven reveals the three obsessions of successful organisations.

 

Business failure is attributable to one key factor in 99.9% of cases: the owner-manager or the management team.  In other words, YOU!  You hold the key to your business success and you hold the key to your business failure.  The highly successful have an obsessive focus on three key things – do you? 

The three things that the highly successful are obsessed with are:

• Strategy
• Marketing
• Teams.

A vast quantity of research concludes that it is these three little words that hold the key to the success of the business.  The meaning and power that comes from understanding these concepts will determine your future.

By focusing on the three key concepts, it does not mean that other concepts (product, finance, cash etc) are not important.  No, what is being said, by isolating these three fields, is that the highly successful business is pre-occupied with them as well as being pretty good at the ‘other stuff’.  It is this pre-occupation that is present in each year’s winners of the various ‘entrepreneur of the year’ awards.  And it is when a business loses these obsessions that they start to go ‘off the boil’ – the magic seems to stop working when the business ceases to be driven by this triad.

Obsession One:  Business Strategy

Strategy is about planning where you want to go while being aware of the business environment - making your own plans while taking into consideration the outside factors.

Part of strategy is deciding where you want to be in, say, three years’ time, where you want to be in one year’s time, and therefore, what it is that you need to do now.  It is about deciding what race you want to win, and against whom you wish to be racing and defining your definition of winning. 

Strategy can be seen in terms of trade-offs.  The essence of trade-offs is that you cannot always hedge your bets by betting on two horses.  Sometimes you have to decide which horse to back.  Trade-offs recognise that you need to decide what you want and accept the consequences of that decision. 
For example, you cannot always go for two conflicting goals: a totally committed workforce and one that you can call on as and when you need them; you cannot usually command a high price for a low quality item.

No-one ever said that thinking strategically was easy and the textbooks don’t help!  But the clearer you are about what you are trying to do and the context of your efforts, then the easier it all becomes.  The simpler your strategy, then the easier it is for your staff and your customers to understand what it is that you are trying to do.  This focus and simplicity breeds success.

Obsession Two:  Marketing

Marketing is another misunderstood word in the business world.  Like ‘strategy’, we use the word ‘marketing’ all over the place and give it different meanings depending upon our mood and our inclination.  No wonder no-one respects these words or the people who use them a lot. 

The textbook definition is:
‘identifying and satisfying customer needs profitably’ but this is a very academic definition and so may not be very helpful to those people running a business.

A better definition might be that marketing is about:
‘deciding what customers’ business you want to win against whom and how’.

Marketing is seeing your business through your customers’ eyes:

• What problem does your product or service solve? 
• Why should people buy from you? 
• What benefits are you offering that your competition doesn’t offer? 
• If you aren’t offering additional benefits then why should people buy from you at all?

Your business leaks messages about itself like radioactivity.  It is not possible to not communicate; everything you do communicates something.  As that is the case, you should decide what it is that you wish to be communicating and be clear about who you want to be communicating with and what the message is that you want them to receive.

In some senses marketing equals communication.  Marketing is about systematically selecting how and what you communicate to whom, with the purpose of winning more of the business that you want. 

Obsession Three:  Teams and People

Most businesses have some kind of ‘people’ problems.  Psychologists (and comedians) would describe these as ‘issues’!

It is inevitable that as the business grows there will be conflicting pressures at force.  The pressure to get more business, the pressure to do more and more work of higher and higher quality, and the pressure to work together.  Eventually these pressures lead to conflicts.  The resolution of the conflicts requires compromise.  It is likely that there will be casualties.

Successful teamwork requires the ability to motivate, lead and communicate effectively.  There are far too many examples of getting these skills wrong and not enough ‘best practice’ examples for us to talk about.

Regarding Strategy, Some Thoughts…

• If you don’t know where you are going, then any road will do!
• If you don’t know where you are going, then how do you know how well you are progressing?
• If you don’t know your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, then how do you hope to compete, and against what?
• If you are not aware of trends and pressures in the market and industry, then how do you expect to make the best, most rational decisions?
• To be constantly reacting to the moves of your competitors will grind you down –take control.  (In a team of huskies, it is only the dogs at the front that have a good view!)  It is usually better to be at the front, in the lead, than at the back of the pack.

Regarding Marketing...

Why should people buy from you if:

• You aren’t able to give them what they want?
• You don’t understand their needs and their wants?
• You aren’t talking their language?
• Your competition is faster/smarter/nicer/cheaper?

Regarding Teams And People...

What will happen to your business, if:

• Your people are not communicating effectively?
• Staff keep leaving?
• The different departments don’t communicate properly?
• Your people don’t get on with each other?
• Your staff weren’t really ‘firing on all cylinders’?

A Final Thought

Financial success is the consequence of how good your are at selling, and how good you are at ‘doing the doing’.  How good you are at selling and doing will determine your financial success, and this is all a result of how obsessed you are with the triad of strategy, marketing and teams!

A Very Final Thought – So What Holds People Back?

What really stops people from growing their business faster (in other words, really focusing on the triad) is fear:

• Fear of losing financial control (by borrowing money, or by releasing/selling equity)
• Fear of losing management control (by delegating or letting others run the show).

What holds back the growth of most businesses is the founder’s inability to let go of the ownership and running of their baby.  Is that you?

The best are focused on marketing, strategy and teams.  Are you? 

 

about the author

 Robert Craven is a keynote speaker and author of the business best-sellers 'Kick-Start Your Business' and 'Customer Is King'. He has recently been described as 'one of the UK’s leading marketing specialists' and the 'entrepreneurship guru'. He runs The Directors’ Centre, helping growing businesses to grow.
For further information, contact Robert Craven on 01225 851044. (rc@directorscentre.com) www.directorscentre.com

Robert Craven©2006, Making Money.

publication details

First published in Making Money, April 2006.