We know how difficult it is, however, to abandon old ideas,to move out of your comfort zone. But what if we showed you a way to gain a competitive advantage over your competitors that was more long-lasting and far-reaching than anything you are achieving now? A way that gained you greater access to your customers, provided a solid foundation for increased opportunities, and taught you how to fundamentally change your approach to your business?
As sales and marketing professionals,we need to become relevant resources to our customers.We need to gain access to our current customers and to higher levels of influence. We need to build immunity against our competitors in order to achieve greater professional success. To do all this, we must be willing to change—we must be willing to stop using a purely tactical approach in our selling and embrace strategy instead.
WHAT IS STRATEGY?
Let’s define our terms. “Strategy”is a concept long shrouded in controversy and unnecessary mystique, with most eminent strategists disagreeing on a common way to define it. We define strategy very simply:
Strategy is “that something” you rely on to meet your objectives.
Tactics are the methods you use to meet your objectives. You cannot determine successful tactics until you have defined your strategy. While tactics are often described using verbs, strategy statements almost always contain nouns. Remember, strategy is what you rely on,not what you do. What you rely on and what you do together become components of your strategic plan.
Once you understand someone’s strategy, his tactics make immediate sense. Let’s look
at an example.To win the Tour de France, Lance Armstrong relied on a key uniqueness:
excellence in the mountains. He knew that, unlike most of his competitors, he didn’t just maintain his time in the mountains, he usually gained time as well—and passing his
opponents along the way gave him an additional psychological edge. Excellence in the
mountains was his strategy. Lance’s training tactics, therefore, were aimed at supporting his strategy. He bought a house in the mountains of Spain and started training there. He slept in an oxygen deprivation “pup tent” to acclimate his body to the thinner air at altitude. He trained more frequently on the actual mountain legs of the race than other riders. Everything he did—his tactics—supported what he was relying on—his strategy—to meet his objective—winning the Tour de France.
Determining a successful strategy requires you know yourself, know your competition,
and know the terrain. Strategy requires constant reassessment: wins, losses, and
changes in terrain can all be catalysts for changing strategies.
There are many ways to use strategy. Strategic thinking, for example, is a current state of mind that factors in probabilities, options, responses and potential outcomes and is an immediate, “real time” discipline. Strategic planning is the process of engaging in the same level of analysis in future focused segments such as three-, five-, or ten-year strategic plans.
Strategic positioning is the science and art of discovering what can be relied upon to
achieve ones goals/objectives—in short, determining strategy. This book will explore the discipline of strategic positioning.
© 2008 Stovall Grainger Inc.