AICC Boxscore 2013

MARKETING COLUMN

Unlocking Growth: Part III By Gene Marino

Strategy time! This is where we begin to separate the amateurs from the professionals. There are just under a million options to choose from when attempting to develop and execute on a strategy, so you can take your pick. Very similar to my “warning label” for the series of unlocking growth articles, it will boil down to the ability to make the tough decisions once the path and direction are revealed. Essentially, there is no right or wrong model or methodology used to create and execute a strategy, and you could fill a library with books on the subject. What I traditionally find is that entrepreneurs do not seek an outside source to help facilitate these processes and try to do “strategy on the cheap.” The success rate suffers as a result, and so by default, many go back to simply doing what they have always done. This article will try to create a high level view of what the ultimate goal of strategy should be and simplify what it should look like from a basic perspective. There are basically four parts to strategy: 1.) What is our value proposition and is it a value our clients are willing to pay for? 2.) What are the ponds you would like to fish in and what do those ponds look like? 3.) What are the most important priorities we want to accomplish? 4.) What are the executable actions that need to take place to succeed and who will be accountable for those actions?

and prospects and provide that service or product better than anyone else in our market space? Time to go fishing What do we really know about our markets? Who we sell to, how many of those clients are in the market area? What our strategy is to acquire new customers? How are we set up to measure progress and performance? There are a lot of sources you can use to assist on defining the size of a market, but essentially, determining who you currently sell to and who is left and making some assumptions on average order size you can quickly discern how much market share you have in a territory or market. It certainly helps to fish in bigger ponds so targeting a market with $10 million in size versus one with $100 million in size should improve your chances of success. Also, assessing the ponds you are targeting from the perspective of gross margin rather than revenue will help assist efforts to add profitable new business versus just “new business.” Once clarity is created on why customers buy from you and where you should spend efforts chasing market share, your growth strategy becomes much more efficient and focused on the areas you want to target, avoiding the trap of chasing opportunistic bids that fall outside your core competency and thus avoid wasting resources along the way.

Tackling these three parts is a challenge, but I will try to simplify the fundamental aspect of each area of strategy. Value Proposition I cannot stress the importance of understanding your value proposition. We discussed this in Unlocking Growth Part II and here it is again. It is the empirical base of why you are in business, but we simply cannot quantify and communicate our value proposition effectively. How can we get to the answer? Oftentimes we like to ask our own employees what our customers like about us, rather than a.) Working with outside research teams for validated unbiased feedback or b.) Going old school and meeting clients (and former clients) face to face to talk about why they buy from you (or why they left). I can tell you unequivocally that while relationship is important, it’s not a scalable growth strategy if that relationship is managed by one person (see Unlocking Growth Part I for more about this pitfall of command and control). I can also say that if it’s all about price, you do not provide your clients with a clearly beneficial reason to conduct business with you. How is your business different? What do you provide to your customers that creates a game- changing dynamic? How does doing business with you and your company remove a client’s pain point? How can we uncover what is truly important to our customers

continued on page 46

33 45

BOX SCORE