Strategy comes naturally to some, but to others it’s still a mystery. Authors, speakers and coaches might even see it as overkill, but is it?
Strategy can be the difference between hoping you succeed and knowing the results are going to happen.
It’s stacking the chips up in your favour… thinking things through…
For such a peaceful person it’s been weird for me to want to understand how battles and wars were won and lost. That may be because so much war strategy often works its way into business.
You can see parallels in how Alexander The Great conquered a city to how Starbucks do the same. You can see the Normandy Landings in Honda’s original marketing in the USA.
It doesn’t matter how big or small anyone’s operation is.
Strategy is important, especially in the coaching market (even more so for business coaches) where there is so much competition.
Here are three simple steps to strategy:
- Know how to compete
You need an edge – a competitive advantage. Sticking with coaches – because there is so much competition – you need to stand out.You need to be an innovator. This is why people like Emma and Tim at the http://www.ipacademy.co.uk/ stand out from the crowd. They are bringing a British slant to information product creation and marketing, which until now has been dominated by the American’s and their approach to marketing. They are also niched in that their area is clearly information products. So if you are a business coach, an author or speaker who wants to create a product, they are clearly the “Go-To people. If you don’t create that edge for yourself you’ll probably be viewed as a “plain vanilla” kind of brand and this is when you are forced to compete on price and giveaways and why you may feel like you never get ahead. - Getting the right people in place
When strategy and skill fit together you get value for money and a return on investment. You need different personalities to get different projects done. Some projects need attention to detail, some need creative flair. Some need someone with a thick skin. Other times we need someone with a softer nature. Some projects need all of the above. And then of course there are the skills and experience to get the job done.We were recently asked to help on a project which looked like simple web design. If the client had gone to a designer they probably would have just got a design. But we spotted that the person needed help with copy. Without that insight they might have a pretty website, but no leads. We were able to refer them to one of our copywriters for a critique or rewrite depending on their budget. And that’s one of our competitive advantages – the experienced team we have to hire out. - Culture of Learning
I don’t know about you, but I want to do things better than they have ever been done before. I want to look at what works elsewhere and bring it into our business and improve it. I also want to look at what doesn’t work and change it. Over a year ago Jo implemented something into the culture of 7-Figure Back Office that she took from her days at Barclays. We call it Win, Learn, Change. It’s a daily thing for us where we look at the wins for the day. We also look at what we’ve learnt and what we’ll now change. Because it was so successful for us, six months ago we brought that same procedure in to our work with clients. So at the end of every project or promotion we’d interview them. This is great because they look at what they did to create their results. It’s also great for us because we see where we can fill gaps for them or make a process tighter. Three months ago we began to bring the same process in for our team at the end of a project. There insights are invaluable to us and our feedback is just as important to them, because it gets us all on the same page – saving the business time and money as well as helping our business improve the service we offer.
Two cautions I will add with strategy, first don’t take too long over it. Some people let it paralyse them. In my view a day is probably enough for most people to get the direction right for a year. From there you just need to get on with it and implement.
Second, follow the strategy you create. Don’t file it and forget it. When you are in a campaign or working on a project, make sure everything is getting done.
If we can help you with strategy, or implementation, let us know by using the contact us page.
