Learn how to develop your business strategy
Your company's business strategy is a set of actions to ensure its growth. Once you have determined this strategy, you will need to write it to clarify and synthesize your ideas, and to be able to present it.
Why develop a business strategy?
To generate growth in your business, you will certainly be forced to take economic risks. Establishing your business strategy will not allow you to eliminate them, but you can control them better and decrease them.
Based on market research , your company’s business strategy sets out your objectives (in terms of turnover, growth) and the means to implement them. It solidifies your market position vis-à-vis your competitors and gives you a precise vision of the way to maintain and even expand your business.
A good business strategy, realistic and operational, requires a thorough knowledge of your market (the market study is therefore a key element to build your strategy), the company context (strengths and weaknesses) and your financial capacities.
Which of the different possible customer segments are you targeting first? Will you address the "traditional" clientele of your business or will you look for emerging segments? What means will you use to touch them? How will you adapt your offer to the target clientele? Or are you going to base your competitive advantage on an aggressive pricing policy or rather on a particular feature of your products or services?
In the end, the marketing strategy is embodied in the "marketing mix", which defines the exact nature of your products or services, their price, distribution networks and means of communication. It must be built over a period of several years to serve as a guide on the actions to be taken and the decisions to be taken.
How to implement your business strategy?
Each company's business strategy is unique. Build your strategy according to the specific characteristics of your products, your sales objectives, and the future position of your company in the market.
• Goals
To build your business strategy, you need to begin by setting clear and realistic goals. For example genuine customer feedback and reviews, may be to increase sales of such product by 3% in two years. Your goals can be financial or commercial in nature, such as wanting to expand your customer base.
You can also aim at several objectives, but be careful not to disperse too much, you may be less effective. It is preferable that you prioritize them in order of priority: nothing will prevent you from setting a second objective to reach when the first one will be filled, on the contrary.
• Means and actions
To achieve your business objective, you will implement means and carry out different actions, which can concern all the aspects of your activity:
- your products or services : you can decide to start or stop the production of products;
- your prices : you can lower your prices to expand your customer base;
- advertising and communication;
- your distribution channels : you can create your website, change distributor.
To give a global coherence to your business strategy, you will have to diversify your actions in each of these areas. How can you imagine, for example, that you can sell new products without asking yourself which channel of distribution will be the most suitable?
• A defined duration
You must have goals and actions that take place over a set period of time.
• The costs
It is obvious that your objectives and actions resulting from it must be in line with your financial means. Be ambitious ... but realistic!
• Human resources
The actions you can take will depend, in part, not only on the number of employees you have, but also on their investment in your business. You have to know how to make them accountable and that the objectives motivate them.
For each of your actions, put in place indicators that will allow you to measure the results once you have launched them. You will be able to measure the effectiveness of your actions and therefore of your commercial strategy, in order to know if you must readjust it or not.
Once you have determined your business strategy, you will need to write it down. This step is essential. It will allow you to first clarify and synthesize your ideas, and this document will also have a place in the development of your company. It will allow you to set your strategy, to be able to present it to potential partners and to verify subsequently that the actions you are conducting are in line with your overall strategy. This document may also have pedagogical scope and serve as a guide, for example, to your future sales teams: it will be a support to explain your future decisions.
