What
every serious company should know
in order to
dominate their market
By Chet Holmes
Strategy
Vs. Tactics
Most companies, even many of the largest companies in the world,
are not very effective at understanding and deploying the difference
between strategy and tactics. Most cannot define the difference.
Just to be sure we're on the same page, let's define them, as
they relate to business.
Strategy
means that you have determined, in advance, an ultimate goal you
would like to achieve for each tactic.
Tactics
are the things you do to achieve your goal. A tactic is a marketing
effort such as: a sales call, a trade show, a newspaper ad, a
meeting with a new client, etc.
Understand that before you deploy
one of these tactics, you have to determine the ultimate objective
you would like to achieve. For example, if you have an interaction
with a customer (like a sales call) and we ask you what you want
to achieve, most likely you would simply say, "to make a
sale."
But we would challenge you that
you can achieve a lot more. Maybe you want to build in a preemptive
strategy for "disempowering" the competition. Maybe
you want to build in an automatic referral program or plant the
seed to generate more referrals.
Maybe you want to arm all your
clients with better information; Every client you have is a potential
salesperson for your organization. What do you want them to say
and have you planted all the right strategic positioning into
your tactical interface?
The point is that if you're not THINKING
this one through, your tactics do not MAXIMIZE
on the opportunity at hand.
Of course, once you "strategize"
on what you expect from each tactic, you need to create an actual policy or procedure
to implement that idea with piercing effectiveness at the tactical
level.
Also, focus on how your tactics
should be working
together to achieve
the ultimate goal or reputation that you want to achieve. Most
companies do not look at their tactics as an integrated program.
For example, let's say that I could put all of your best potential
buyers in a room all at once and then gave you the opportunity
to stand in front of them to make your best presentation to these
people. This one single opportunity, if properly executed, could
forever change your life.
Imagine, that you were given all
the time you needed and this incredible opportunity to tell all
your best potential buyers exactly what you want them to know
about you and your business. What would you say? Here are some
things you should think about before you get up in front of this
group:
1) What is the long-term reputation
you want? And, are you operating today in a way that is going
to achieve that reputation?
2) Exactly how do you want to be perceived?
3) What's different or better about how you do things over everyone
else? Every company has something unique to offer, something that
sets them apart - if you don't, then you should have. You'd better
think about it and make sure you are communicating it.
In other words, what is your ultimate
strategic position and perception you want the market to have
about you and your products or services? Does your marketing today
reflect the ultimate reputation or position you want in your market?
Have you really thought about this?
When you have great strategies,
great positioning and your tactics are always deploying your strategy,
then all your tactics begin to add up to something. Your tactics
work harder and smarter for the same money if they deploy strategy
every time you use one. Same money, bigger results: if you're
THINKING and PLANNING
before you execute.
Here's the BIG breakthrough
every company should be looking to achieve
I teach a concept called: "Setting
the Market's buying criteria." Let's define this, because
if you get this on a deep level, it can change everything for
you.
Most people come to most buying
situations with a loose buying criteria and then as they get more
educated, their buying criteria begins to formulate.
If you set
up the buying criteria, you take marketshare.
So let me give you an example.
We grew up in a time when virtually every pizza place delivers
pizza. Let's take you back to 1970. At that time, no one delivered
pizza. We called the local pizza place and we ordered a pizza
and went down to pick it up.
So let's say you and I are sitting
around looking at the success of MacDonald's back then and saying:
"Jeez, there's a pizza place on every corner in America,
we ought to be able to come up with some kind of franchise-able
idea about Pizza."
Could we make pizza really different?
Not really, people want pizza when they want pizza. So we look
through the yellow pages (in 1970) and we notice there's this
one pizza place who delivers. We call him up to find out what
the service is like and the person on the phone says: "We're
about a two hour wait right now."
Bingo
Dominoes shifted the buying criteria
away from pizza and to delivery.
And then they further shifted it to speed of delivery. Their original slogan was: "Pizza delivered
in 30 minutes or its free." That totally shifted the entire
market's buying criteria on pizza. That became a $9 billion buying
criteria, and it changed the way the entire market thought. And
the product was secondary. Is there a way for YOU to do that?
Fed Ex: Their slogan, "When
it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight," changed
the way we all do business. I can tell you that even as recently
as back in 1980, it NEVER absolutely had to be there overnight.
They created a buying criteria that shifted the entire market
and created a fifty billion dollar industry.
So what's the buying criteria for
your products? And can we develop one that literally makes everyone
say: "THAT'S what I need to buy."
Here are some other
things to consider:
1) Can your buying criteria actually
motivate purchasing from people who might not think they need
the product until they hear the strategic position? "The
nighttime, achy, sniffling, sneezing, fever-so-you-can rest medicine."
This single strategic approach created a billion per year product
(Nyquil) where we once took two or three different products.
2) Can your buying criteria pre-empt or disempower your competition?
3) Can your buying criteria make you the single most logical choice?
(when it absolutely positively has to be there overnight).
Now let's say we set up a flawless
buying criteria, one that you're sure shifts huge marketshare
to your company.
How do we deploy that?
This can make all the difference.
I've seen brilliant ideas die on the vine because those with the
ideas didn't know how to implement at the tactical level.
So this is the part where I shamelessly
plug my services.
I can give you example after example
of situations where I was able to completely shift the buying
criteria in favor of my client. Complicated or simple, it doesn't
matter. Simple can be shifted simply (pizza example), and complicated
has some built-in opportunities to shift the buying criteria in
a way that no one can compete (the more complex, the better we
can set up the criteria in your favor).
The point is that I have never
seen a situation where I couldn't set up a buying criteria in
way in which my client became their market's most logical choice
for anyone (or almost anyone) exposed to the approach.
But the implementation, this is
really the key. I learned that the hard way. My first large corporate
client paid me more than $300,000 and together we developed a
"strategy" that would've entirely shifted the buying
criteria in their favor. I presented this to the CEO and he knew
I was right. I rolled it out at a sales meeting with their 265
salespeople) and they all intellectually grasped the concept.
Then they went out into the field
ill-equipped to deploy this strategy and it failed terribly. Why?
Because most people aren't tens. A "Ten" is one of those
people who's just darn good at whatever it is your want them to
do. You can get shades of ten: One person is a ten at qualifying,
but a 3 at getting in the door in the first place. Another person
is a ten at getting in the door, but he could care-a-less about
the customer (he's a 2 in that area). Etc. The point is that great
ideas, I learned the hard way, are only as good as plan to implement.
Over the years, I've developed
more than fifty proprietary methods of implementing anything.
This is a critical skill area and it is one of the skill areas
I bring to the table. A skill earned the hard way, through trial
and error.
The next steps if you
want some help:
A Chet Holmes marketing,
management and sales audit.
It's taken 15 years to craft this
audit. I did my first audit on a large client had 23 questions
and I thought that audit was very strong. Five years later it
had grown to 66 questions. 15 years later, now at more than 100
questions, I've really polished this service. More than 100 questions
enable me to learn more about the companies I audit than they
know themselves. Yes, believe me. I will find out things no knows
because no one ever asked these questions. The quality of the
questions is superb. Second, the process is highly evolved after
15 years of doing this.
I guarantee, absolutely, that I
will find more than hundred, usually more than 200 specific opportunities
for improvement. Some profound, some not as profound, but ALL
will be significant and worth mentioning and you will
be impressed with the findings.
After the audit (interviewing many
layers deep in your organization, like a blood hound on the scent
of the way to radically improve profits), I take you through my
findings. At that point, you have the option of going or not going
any further with me. In other words, you can take my "findings"
and the opportunities I point out for you and go and implement
on your own.
I can tell you that no client has
ever had the audit and its report and not gone forward with the
next several phases.
The next several
phases include research to prove or substantiate the strategic
position that will, in fact, "shift the buying criteria in
your favor," and then several layers of implementation of
the hundred or more "possible improvements" the audit
uncovers.
Typically, I find that companies
under $3 million in annual revenue are really not in a position
to get involved with this level of service. No intent to insult,
just please understand how many responses I get from companies
who really are not in a position to utilize my services or even
deploy the concepts I might present to them.
I can get you results and would
explore the possibilities with any viable candidate.
If
this is you, please click here to email me.
