| Power Breakfast Hour: 11 November 2009 |
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The 3 Building Blocks of Formulating Winning Strategies Join International Sales Leadership and Performance Coach c.j. Ng in this Power Breakfast Hour in Shanghai where he will be sharing with you how to formulate better strategies that will meet your expectations in simple yet practical ways:
VENUE: 567 Tianyaoqiao Road (near Xietu Road, Near Metro Line 4 Shanghai Stadium Station), Level 3, Senben Plaza, Shanghai 上海天钥桥路567号（靠斜土路，地铁4号线 上海体育场站）3楼 森本大厦 DATE: Wednesday, 11 November 2009 TIME: 08:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. PRICE: RMB 100 ONLY! To make this a more conducive discussion, we are expecting a small group of about 15 people only. The room can only take in 18, so please register early to avoid disappointments. Please e-mail your registrations to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it To allow more participation from more companies, ONLY 2 registrants per company are invited. Pls. check out our web sites www.directions-consulting.com and www.psycheselling.com/page4.html for more inspiration.
The 3 Building Blocks of Formulating Winning Strategies by c.j. Ng
With increasing pressure from the competition, the customers as well as shareholders, many managers responded with “We MUST implement a better strategy”. However, when asked what exactly is being done with the new strategy, the reply is usually along the lines of “we plan to launch a new product”, or “we plan to have a new sales/ customer initiative”. Strategy seems to be related with some kind of planning. More importantly, most new sales strategies tend NOT to deliver the expected results. Somehow, the managers either seem to miss some important ingredients, or don’t know how to mix the right ingredients with the right processes. In any case, here’s a simple yet practical guide to formulating winning strategies. All you have to do is to master these 3 key building blocks:
The Goal, and How to Reach It Whether you are hatching a plan or formulating a strategy, it all starts with a Goal, i.e. what do you want to achieve eventually. Before we even look at the steps on how to achieve this goal, here are some questions you may want to ask yourself first:
Interestingly, most managers blame the lack of motivation of their staff and team members when goals are not met. However, if team members don’t resonate with these goals, or in these days, they feel that achieving such goals will only serve to inflate the bosses’ pockets and not theirs, they won’t want to commit themselves to help you achieve those goals. In short, if your team feel that it is your goal, and NOT theirs, they won’t make it work for you. This is not a New Age gimmick to motivate younger Generation-Y team members. Rather, making your goal feel as if it’s your team’s dates back 2,500 years ago in China when military strategist Sun Tzu mentioned the need to arouse your people so that they identify with your Goals. He called it the Way; in today’s terminology, we call it the Goal or the Vision. Having asked the question “Why this Goal”, the next question will be “How are we going to achieve it”. In a nutshell this involves:
Some people set strategies and Goals so far out in the future that they could not answer the above questions. Without providing the answers, such “goals” are at best “hopes”, and such “strategies” are more like general directions. It will be difficult to get your desired results as such. But if you do, you empower your team to take the appropriate actions.
Having passion and a drive to succeed is not enough to achieve your goals. You will also need to have the right resources as well. In many cases, companies whose strategies fall short of expectations make one of the following mistakes: Under allocation of resources to support a goal; and Allocating too much of the wrong resources to reach the goal The former tends to occur with companies with tighter budgets. Some typical incidents could be when a company is launching a new product, it tries to save costs by reducing the manpower in the R&D department, or cutting the marketing budgets. At times, when expanding into overseas territories, some companies even hire commission-only agents to develop those territories. The result of such under-allocation of resources is simply there isn’t enough coverage in the market to get the customers to know you, let alone getting a significant number of them to buy from you. On the other hand, companies that are cash-rich tends to waste their cash by spending them on resources that are not needed. Typical examples are the Dot.Coms in the late-90’s and early 2000, where I a bid to generate “eye-balls”, most Dot.Coms simply advertise indiscriminately. The result is that the Dot.Coms wasted the cash which could have used in improving their product offering to attract steady revenue streams instead. Is cash or funding the only resources to allocate in your strategy? Absolutely not. Here are some other resources that you may want to commit to make your strategy a success:
Ultimately, no company will have endless resources to allocate or commit to a strategy. You may want to prioritise what needs to be one first, and allocate your limited resources accordingly. Failing to plan, is planning to fail.
Responding to Customers’ and Competitors’ Responses When you take action, there will be either positive and negative responses from customers and competitors. Here’s the difference between formulating a plan and a strategy: when formulating a strategy, you will have to anticipate what will be the likely responses from customers and competitors. If you get positive customer responses, expect competitors to exert their pressure, usually by providing similar products and services. That was something Netscape did not anticipate when it was the leading web browser in the mid-nineties. It didn’t take long for late-comer Microsoft to literally drive Netscape out of business with the Internet Explorer. Even when a new product or service fails, competitors can also learn and improvise from your failures. Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) launched one of the earliest and most ambitious Personal Digital Assistant (PDAs), the Newton, in the late 80’s, but it flopped. In 1996, 2 years before Apple decided to cease development for the Newton, Palm Computing launched the Palm Pilot, and it was a great success. Whichever the case, you will be imperilling your plans if you don’t take into consideration of competitive pressure. Here are some tips on how you can counter-respond to the responses of your competitors and customers:
As illustrated above, you will need more than broad directions to formulate your strategies. You will need to gain insights about you customers, competitors, industry trends and even the mind-sets of your team to make your strategies deliver your expected results Need more ideas on how you can improve your quality of selling, meet your targets and make your customers adore you? Simply e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or call +86-136 7190 2505 or Skype: cydj001 and arrange to buy me a cup of mocha. All information shall be kept in confidence. |
