Many small business owners struggle with the concept of business strategy. They never seem to be able to get it clarified or to work a strategy consistently. If you are having trouble working a business strategy for your small business, let's look at the top ten ways to ruin your business strategy.
1) Have no clue what a strategy is.
Avoid learning about strategies and strategic planning. Decide that it's "too hard" to understand. Make sure that you never take time to figure out strategic planning.
2) Never take time to plan.
You're too busy running the business anyway. Make sure that you do EVERYTHING so there's no time to plan. Who has the time to plan? There's always all that "firefighting" and rearranging the deck chairs to be done. If you took time to plan, you'd have to commit to doing important things, instead of cleaning your office.
3) Make a strategy but NEVER execute it.
Print it up neatly and put it on the shelf with neat lettering on the binder spine. Don't take the first step or a single action. Feel guilty every time you look at that binder, but forget about it the rest of the time.
4) Believe that your business will be just fine without your working strategically.
You get a thrill from the whole "flying by the seat of the pants" approach and you don't want to plan, or think in advance about what you want to accomplish with your business. You're content to "take what comes".
5) Believe that "being overwhelmed" is an effective way to run a business.
Don't ever get to the point where planning in advance is the surest way not to end up overwhelmed. Consider "burnout" to be a necessary evil and pretend that you have no control over the overwhelming factors of your business.
6) Don't keep your focus on your strategy.
Be distracted by "crises", daily life, "the economy", business news, or client problems. Let anything take you off track. Stay emotionally upset and non-productive.
7) Don't take daily strategic action.
Just occasionally take some small action. Be sure you aren't consistent enough to develop momentum or get results. Never put your strategic activities first. Don't "calendar" strategic actions. Don't think about or plan when you can do needed strategic planning or action.
8) Never get professional input into your strategy.
Come up with a strategic plan that you "just know" will work, but don't run it by a marketing professional, mastermind or entrepreneurial consultant. Take the attitude that you know everything about strategy, no matter how little you've studied or researched.
9) Market to a "fantasy market" that only exists in your imagination.
Insist that hordes of people demand what you offer - though reality doesn't validate this. Refuse to bend about your target market convictions - no matter what your actual results are. Build your whole strategy around this fantasy.
10) Never create a long-term strategy.
Instead work on short-term plans and don't think about or plan for the future. After all, nothing you do will have any effect on the future so why bother to do long-range strategic planning?
Now you know the top ten ways to ruin your business strategy. Essentially, they have to do with never working strategically, or putting strategic planning first for your business.
Suzi Elton provides business writing that attracts targeted prospects to your service business and converts them into clients for you. She is a Robert Middleton Certified Action Plan Marketing Coach, as well as a professional writer. Her website offers a free series of 8 assessments you can use to analyze your own site.