So, what is your business strategy? You do have a strategy, right?

Can your business succeed without a business strategy?

I wouldn’t suggest running your business without some kind of strategy or plan. Just going from one tactic to another, testing the waters to see what might work probably isn’t the best routine for a successful business. This is more like standing in the middle of a forest, walking a few steps in one direction, only seeing more trees and switching to another direction. You may eventually get out, but how do you get where you wanted to go?

What do you think of when you think of a business strategy? I think of a good leadership team, supported by a great sales team supported by an excellent marketing team, making the company as a whole the best in its industry!

What kind of tools do you think need to be in place to have a great business strategy? I think of all the tools a great company has to bring to the table. (I know you are looking for more…read on!)

As we all know, the economy we are in brings business conditions that change fairly quickly and at times we need to go into survival mode and change our business strategy to bring in more sales. So what do we do? Advertise? Cut prices? Well, maybe you don’t have to do either. Have you ever really thought about what you are offering and who you are trying to sell to?

Here some questions you might want to ask yourself:

• What are you the best in the world at?
• Who is your market niche?
• How are you trying to sell to them?
• What do they know about you?
• What is your brand telling others about you?
• What is your online reputation?
• Do you, your product, your company, and your offerings stand out from the crowd?
• Are you and your offerings unique?
• You may think you are unique, but do others?

We at Randolph Sterling have been revisiting our own business strategy. You see, we are unique in our offerings, but, just as I ask above, we at least we think we are. The question is though, do others? Well, we are currently working on our brand and messaging. Making sure we are targeting the right market, paying attention to our online reputation and ensuring our market niche knows we are unique in our offerings as it will come across in our brand and messaging. We are very excited as we have had clients and prospects ask us to provide them with services beyond what we have been advertising. We are excited as we begin to pull this information together to share with you in the near future (you know once we get our brand down). As we have started our process, we would like to share with you the strategy we have put together in deciding what additional services to offer.

Since we don’t corner the market on good ideas, I’d like to mention that Harvard Business Review is a good resource on strategy too.

The only problem though is you have to buy their books. Using us as a guinea pig might be a great starting point for now! In the coming weeks, we will be discussing different areas of a business strategy by discussing your market niche, your brand, online reputation, and the uniqueness of your offerings. We have uncovered some very interesting things about our company and think you may do the same.