What’s Your Strategy? Choosing one Requires Knowing Your Options

September 11, 2009

After the mission, goals, and objectives are clear, establish how you’re going to achieve those items. A strategy provides the vehicle and answers the question “How are we going to get there with the resources we have?”

The goal of your strategy is to establish a guide that matches your organization’s strengths with market opportunities to position your organization in the mind of the customer. Does your strategy match your strengths with how you will provide value and be perceived by your customers?

A good strategy focuses on efficiency through:

• Achieving performance targets
• Out-performing your competition
• Achieving sustainable competitive advantage
• Growing your revenue and maintaining or shrinking your expenses
• Satisfying customers
• Respond to changing market conditions

Basically, strategies keep your whole company acting together while strengthening the company’s long-term competitive position in the marketplace.

In the 1980 classic Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analysing Industries and Competitors, Michael Porter simplifies the scheme by reducing it down to the three best strategies. They are cost leadership, differentiation, and market segmentation (or focus). We’ll elaborate on the different strategies next.

You may also be interested in:

• Choosing a Market Penetration Strategy
• Where is Your Company Headed? How are You Going to Get There?
• Choosing a Product Development Strategy

Topics in this post: How to Write a Strategic Plan, Strategies |