Strategy in a small business dictates a completely different type of thinking in today’s fast changing environment. We can’t afford to think too short term while concentrating on results and we have to be careful and not think too long term and in the process forget those things that really work. Strategic planning combines goals, objectives, tactics, and iterative approaches across multiple facets of your business.
A successful small business strategy begins with a framework for making decisions about your business. Here are some of the factors that should be included in your decision making framework:
1. Financial
What are the financial goals and objectives for your small business and how do they lay out by product or service? This needs to be both a revenue and a profit outlook with consideration of the cost of the market variables involved in your business as time changes.
2. Your Marketplace
What motivates your customers and causes them to make a buy decision for your product or service? Is this the same for all segments of your business and what part does your sales organization play in this. What specific actions your customers need to take to complete the buy decision and how does the business support these actions.
3. The Competition
How does your competition affect the way your customers think? What is your response mechanism to competitive promotions and their impact on your customer base and how quickly can you respond without being entirely reactive.
4. Customer Segmentation
Your strategy needs to include your customer segmentation analysis. Your customer segments must be such that you can apply specific elements of your overall strategy across them individually or on clusters. Your segments need to be prioritized and your strategy should take this into account.
5. Test Driving Your Strategy
You need to be able to test drive specific pieces of your overall strategy. You have to be able to perform impact analysis across the facets of your business to see how the strategy is taking hold. You need to determine up front how often you’ll test drive your strategy.
Strategic thinking needs to be done from “outside the box” (your box) while understanding that you need to think also “inside the box” (your customer’s box and you competitor’s box)
You need to be able to fly at 30,000 feet so you can differentiate the forest from the trees.