If you are looking for growth, or thinking of moving into new markets, then ask yourself the following questions. If you can’t answer them, talk to us. We can help!
What is your value proposition?
If what you offer is a service, you should be able to explain how you do what you do and how that separates you from your competition. If product development is your business, then you need to explain why your product is superior or perhaps unique and what benefits it presents to its intended users. Can you strongly articulate what differentiates you from your competition?
What is your vision?
What does your company do and what does it plan to achieve? Where is it going? Can you in a few sentences explain to your customer exactly what your company’s goals are? This is your vision statement.
What is your mission?
Your mission statement should clearly define how you do what you do. You may also want to answer why you do what you do. While this is not essential to your vision or mission statements, I believe that it is a very important question to answer both to your customers and to yourself. It can serve to keep you passionate about your business.
Do you have an elevator pitch?
You just stepped into an elevator with the president of a company that you would love to do business with. Can you articulate in a few sentences what you do and how you do it in such a way that you present an option that your potential client can’t ignore? An option based on your value proposition, your vision statement, and the passion or conviction with which you present it.
Do you have a sales strategy?
Do you have a well thought out sales strategy? Have your trained your sales staff on your product or service such that they can also speak to your value proposition? Do they have the tools and the marketing collaterals they need to be effective? Is your compensation plan fair and motivating to your reps? Does it reward for overachievement but save your company harmless from huge payouts? Are you leveraging your successes into new sales?
Are you market driven?
So many companies start with a great idea. The founder has a passion for something and believes that everyone else will feel the same way about it. It is much wiser to know if there is in fact a market for this great idea. Is your company market driven? Have you done some market research? Doing so will let you know if your idea has potential. As well, it will give you a great deal of information from which you can begin to develop your marketing strategies and clearly define your revenue model.
Are you flexible?
So, you’ve done your market research and found that there is a market. However, along the way you find that it’s tough sledding but there is a slightly different opportunity that you can easily deliver to. Are you flexible enough to steer in that direction? Does it mean abandoning your original plans or is it additive to them?
Do you have a product development strategy?
Do you have a product or service development strategy and road-map? Do you suffer from feature creep? Do you understand the value of “good” project management? Are you driving efficiencies?
Are you maintaining focus?
It’s so easy to wander and lose focus, to get distracted, to start things and not finish them. Is this happening to your company?
Are you working SMART?
Everyone talks about the value of hard work, but, are you working smart? In every area of your organization are you planning things out and leveraging your competencies to their fullest? Are you empowering your people to do likewise? Do your internal mechanisms enable and encourage ‘effective’ communication?
