Tag Archives: strategy

Business Strategy is Focus

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Strategy is focus
Strategy is focus

There is a very real business use for a strategy summary as part of every business plan, even a lean plan. Since strategy is focus, it leads to some difficult decisions as time goes on. New opportunities arise. Some new opportunities are great additions, offering healthy evolution and growth. Others are dangerous distractions that dilute the business, blur the focus, and bring the business down. The owner, owners, or real core management team have to make these decisions, and they are hard. Normal entrepreneurs want to go into every new market to please everybody they can. So a good strategy summary helps to frame the new opportunities right.

There’s no obvious formula for making these decisions. They don’t teach it in business school. It’s something business owners have to do for themselves. There is always risk and opportunity. So you refer to your strategy summary first, and then think about it.

This should come up in the monthly review sessions I recommend for every lean business planning process for every business. That’s in Section 3, Keeping it Live.

Business Tactics Checklist

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You can use this checklist to set tactics to execute strategy. Tactics are easier to recognize than define. Focus on content, what’s supposed to happen. Think of tactics as absorbing the traditional marketing plan, product plan, and financing plan. Your next step will be to set these tactics into a plan with concrete milestones, performance metrics, lists of assumptions, and so on.

Business Execution Checklist

This business tactics checklist should give you an idea of the tactical decisions you make as you execute strategy. In a lean plan, you still want to cover what you need to plan and run your business, but simply jot it down in an organized way, usually bullet points, so you can refer back to it as you flesh out the details. But you don’t bother with descriptions.

Marketing Tactics Checklist

  • Tactics to locate target market, media that work for target market.
  • Pricing
  • Messaging (tag line, descriptions, etc.)
  • Benefits list
  • Features lists
  • Web presences including web, mobile, social media
  • Content marketing
  • Advertising
  • Packaging
  • Channels of distribution
  • Margins through channels
  • Channel gatekeepers
  • Affiliate marketing
  • Social media, platforms, metrics, paid posts, etc.
  • Events
  • Affiliate marketing
  • PR (media strategies, interviews, blog posts)

Product Tactics Checklist

  • Product descriptions and product lists
  • Technology, patents, trade secrets, protection
  • Price lists, menus, etc.
  • Features and benefits lists
  • Versions, configurations, new versions, new configurations
  • New product (or service)
  • Product (or service) updates
  • Bundling
  • Sources and costs, vendors, suppliers
  • Packaging
  • Liability problems
  • Registration for legal requirements
  • Registration in lists of providers

Other Business Tactics

  • Funding needs, raising investment
  • Use of funds
  • Borrowing, loans, credit lines
  • Management team recruitment, compensation
  • Benefits