Most people think of strategic thinking as something only people in upper management or company leaders do. While it does start with leadership, strategic thinking is everyone’s job. It can be difficult to execute a strategic plan if the entire team is not on board.
Creating a Strategically Minded Culture
Strategic thinking can be taught. The Center for Management & Organization Effectiveness (CMOE) offers multiple comprehensive Applied Strategic Thinking workshops for management and every level of employee. They teach how market leadership requires strategic thinking and stress the importance of a company’s culture to their success.
How To Become A Market Leader
Most people think of strategic thinking as something only people in upper management or company leaders do. While it does start with leadership, strategic thinking is everyone's job. It can be difficult to execute a strategic plan if the entire team is not on board. Creating a Strategically Minded C
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- Focused first-class strategy required to position your unique value proposition so customers seek out your business.
- Exceed customer’s needs and expectations today, and before they’re needed tomorrow, to stay ahead of rivals and new competitors.
- Talk about strategic, customer-oriented imperatives regularly.
- Encourage employees to build their own strategies to deal with issues.
- Coach employees when they succeed and when they come up short.
- Help employees accept accountability for results.
- Ensure employees know what their roles are related to customer satisfaction and why they matter.
Leaders have to help their teams understand how what they do ensures the continued success and sustained growth of the business. Find out more in Strategic Tips for New Managers.
Sustained Growth Requires Customer-Centric View
The more challenging it is to be found by new customers, the more important it is to retain the ones you already have. That is where having a customer-centric business plan comes in. As John Jantsch wrote: Keeping Customers is the New Lead Generation.
From 21 Habits of Highly Successful Growth Hackers
As customer acquisition rates slide, minimum AdWords bids climb, and Facebook and other social networks charge to reach your audience, retention grows in importance. Ad costs are increasing–and so is the common use of ad blockers.
Businesses who want to win should allocate more than the typical 20 percent of their marketing budgets to customer retention. If you don’t have a popular loyalty program, now is the time to get one or improve the one you already have.
- It costs between 4 and 10 times more to acquire a new customer than it does to keep an existing one.
- Sixty-five percent of a company’s business comes from existing customers, and it costs five times as much to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one satisfied.
- The lifetime value of a customer includes everything they will ever buy from you today, tomorrow, and in the years ahead—and the cost of acquiring a new customer is estimated to be 20 times greater than keeping an existing customer happy.
- Most businesses put all their marketing effort into getting new customers, yet it costs between seven and twenty times more to sell to a new customer than it does to sell to an existing customer.
- Twenty percent of your customers bring you 80 percent of your revenue (the old 80/20 rule which still holds).
Retaining customers is low-hanging fruit. RetentionScience.com reports: “Increasing customer retention rates by 5 percent increases profits by 25 to 95 percent.”
Click image to read Customer Retention Should Outweigh Customer Acquisition on RetentionScience.com
Why combine training your people in strategic thinking and customer retention? Because lack of understanding of the value to your business of retaining customers is a big reason why your marketing, customer service, and shipping departments are not doing all they can to keep customers happy. Make sure to read KISSmetrics’ Fastest Ways to Lose Customers.
Long-Term Strategic Thinking
In 55 Ways to Be a Better Leader, Peter Economy (“The Leadership Guy”), includes a section on strategic thinking. He suggests answering these questions:
- How will a new strategy improve the organization’s competitiveness?
- How will it be perceived by customers?
- What’s the long-term impact of your planned actions?
Companies that include their employees in long-term planning will have more engaged and effective workers. They convey clearly not only what the company’s long-term goals and strategies are, but more importantly, how they will benefit the customer, employees, and business–in other words, why the plan should be executed.
From Strategic Thinking for Better Lead Generation to finding strategic opportunities, the ability to think strategically is essential to maximum success.
Need more ideas? Read about the importance of customer retention and growth hacking in 21 Habits of Highly Successful Growth Hackers.
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