Strategy: Do you have one? Part 1

Is it strategy or is it illusion?Do you have a strategy to grow your business? Be honest?

If yes, are you using it? Is there a sales plan in it? Are you executing your sales plan? Are you on track to meet your goals? Are you measuring your results? Are you accountable to your results? Where can you improve?

When I ask most business owners, their answers resemble this:

• Do you have a strategy to grow your business? Of course.
• Be honest? Well, I did.
• If yes, are you using it? Um, sure.
• Is there a Sales Plan in it? Ah, well, it’s not written down.
• Are you executing your sales plan? We try but we’re so busy.
• Are you on track to meet your goals? We’re doing okay.
• Are you measuring your results? Not really.
• Are you accountable to your results? No, I guess not.
• Where can you improve? I don’t know.

If you’re cringing because you recognize this conversation playing in your head, you’re not alone—but you’re not in good company, either.

The Small Business Administration suggests failure rates for start ups are:

• 20% will fail in 12 months
• 30% will fail within 24 months
• 49% will fail within 5 years
  
  

The Biggest Reason for Failure: Lack of Planning and No Strategy

Most people start businesses with a plan and maybe even revise it once a year but the truth of the matter is that we get so busy working “in” the business that we don’t step back and set aside time to work “on” the business.

What happens often is we get a taste of early success and throw everything we have into our business, and then it starts to own us. We begin to subscribe to some of the deadly fallacies of passive business strategy:

• “My product/service is excellent and better than the competition.” (If I build it, they will come.)
• “I’m on Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/Google+ and people like our business” (Social Media will show people how great we are and why they should buy from us.)
• “I’m so close to landing this big account. I met Mr. Widget’s cousin’s brother’s sister-in-law’s kindergarten teacher and she is going to tell him all about our business and why he should contact us. (Other people find my business so compelling that they will spread the word and sell for me.)
• “We put up sign/placed an ad/sponsored the football team.” (Once people hear about us, they’ll come through the door.)

These tactics have 3 things in common: Passive. Reactive. Deadly.

There’s a reason this phrase exists: “Hope, is not a strategy”. Well I’d like to modify it to say this: “Hope, Marketing, Social Media, Networking, Advertising and DENIAL—are NOT a Sales Growth Strategy.” Selling more is a sales strategy and planning and executing, measuring and accountability is the only way you purposefully sell more.

Come back next week when we give you the 4 steps to building an Effective Growth Strategy you can implement immediately—and in the meantime, download our free Recipe for Results Blueprint to plan, build, and fortify your strategic business development initiatives!