It’s important to have a strategy for your business.This kind of long term planning informs all the other day to day decisions you make, ensuring they pull together to create a coherent future for your business, not pulling different directions – or pulling it apart!
Today we’re taking a look at how you can build a business strategy that will get the best for you from your business and from the experience of running it.
What is Strategy in Business?
Your business strategy is a long term plan for your business, tightly tied to your vision of what a successful future is. In this it’s distinct from your range of tactics, which are the shorter term decisions you make to get towards your strategic aims.
One danger in not having a strategy, or not understanding how to apply your strategy to the day to day running of your business, is that there’s nothing unifying all those short term decisions. You take whatever the easiest, least costly one is each time (quite sensibly) but they end up building a business that doesn’t cohere, a brand that doesn’t have an identity customers can understand and get behind. Whether it’s an inventory of products that don’t make sense together, pricing schemes that leave everyone feeling left out, or shops in out of the way locations that don’t suit your market, short termism can leave you with a business that simply doesn’t make sense – and where people don’t want to spend their money.
What Do You Want?
One of the most important things you can do is come up with a vision of the future for your business that you want to work towards. What do you find stimulating to work on, and where do you want to end up? Is growth the most exciting part of a business for you? Do you like cultivating a small number of loyal customers whose needs you understand inside and out? Do you want to stay close to the operations of the business or ascend to the boardroom?
It’s important to be honest with yourself at this stage – don’t set in stone a future for your business that you don’t actually want!
Getting Help
One of the best things you can do at this early stage (or if, with a few years’ experience under your belt, you want to review your strategy) is get some help. If you’re looking for a strategy consultancy, or a growth advisory firm London is a good place to start.
When you’ve found the agency that’s right for you, they can help with insights into your industry and market to help you shape a vision for the future of your business that will last the distance.
