We hear the terms business strategies and business strategy development very often. Yes, every business including every small business needs business strategies and one of the very important competencies of every successful business is the business strategy development process. Every successful business has a sound business strategy in place and the entire business is focused on implementing that strategy. So, before you jump into developing your business strategy it is a good idea to step back and clarify what is actually a business strategy and what is important for developing a winning business strategy.
The importance of strategic planning and the purpose of your business strategy is about making strategic choices and making smart business decisions. For example, making choices regarding your target market, the products and services your business will offer to your customers and the activities or businesses processes which deliver your products and services to your customers. So the three major questions regarding building business strategies are: (1) Who is my customer? (2) What is my offering? And (3) What are my critical business activities?
Another important focus in developing business strategies is making choices about what are you going to be focused on in your business. Even more important strategic issue is deciding on the things that you are not going to do or you will do your best to avoid. For example, you can start working on your business strategies by asking yourself the question: “What are the things I will avoid?” You can use this question working through the three steps described above (the customer, the offering, the business activities). An example would be: I am not going to do business with certain customer segments because that is not my target market and I have no interest to enter those markets. Another example is: I am not going to offer this type of services because they are not profitable enough for my small business... As a summary, business strategies and business strategy development are about making strategic business choices about your major customers, your offering (the products and services you sell) and the major business activities you need to perform and deciding what are the most important or critical business issues you need to be focused on as well as defining the business issues you need to avoid.
We hear the terms business strategies and business strategy development very often. Yes, every business including every small business needs business strategies and one of the very important competencies of every successful business is the business strategy development process. Every successful business has a sound business strategy in place and the entire business is focused on implementing that strategy. So, before you jump into developing your business strategy it is a good idea to step back and clarify what is actually a business strategy and what is important for developing a winning business strategy.