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Coaching and Facilitating Individuals and Teams to take on The STEWARDSHIP OF STRATEGY for your client and for your business. Author: Doug Odgers, e-client Ltd “How on earth do you expect me to be strategically focused in my accounts, when the targets you’ve given me are for twelve months?” .... familiar? ....scars, book, tee-shirt come to mind? ...and so we dismiss the notion, walk away from it, go for that opportunity in our sales pipeline that once again for this year will save the day, get us in the Apex Club again, get that key account you’ve always wanted. BUT, that niggle - “... being strategically focused, what the hell is that!” “Well of course I know what it is! BUT am I doing it. Why am I NOT doing it?- ‘COS SURE AS HELL, IT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO, EVERY FIBRE TELLS ME SO” Walking into the issue of strategic focus is a bit like sitting through that boring presentation on quality, half interested, half ‘somewhere else’, but as the presentation goes on the more sense its making and the more the ice cold trickle of reality is wandering down your spine as you remember with increasing clarity that that job you did last week wasn’t in this quality ball park. | Time for a benefit statement: | Your Tactical focus - V - Your Strategic focus - Tactical - the more client calls I make the more chances of sales
- Strategic - how long am I liable to keep this sales territory, can I improve on it and what sort of sales should I make to show I am worthy of a better territory.
Question: which one of these should you choose? Answer: neither, you need to do BOTH! |
... however, we are too often just influenced by what is under our nose ... looking up and looking forward is okay .. nothing wrong either in looking out for yourself ... ..... looking out for yourself ... YOURSELF is a pretty key word here ... managing change has to start with YOU. STEWARDSHIP OF STRATEGY might be something you’ve never done before ... Strategically Focused might be something you’ve never done well before ... THEREFORE to do it means a CHANGE, change in your professional/business focus ... but to start with it has to be change in you ... using your Fear, Uncertainties & Doubts (FUD) in the face of change to your advantage. | Time for a benefit statement: | Sales people have got change management cracked - always have had - its their fundamental skill - we know it as modification of behaviour - you know, watching the body language, active listening, establishing the client’s needs etc., where once interpreted the salesperson adopts a slightly more empathetic approach to the person they are talking to - its a basic rule of good communication - modifying their own behaviour is an acceptance of a NEED for change. |
The minute you recognise the environment in which you work requires a lifting of your skills, is the moment you start to change ... recognising where, in this instance, improving your personal skill and knowledge make you a BETTER BUSINESS PERSON and adding real value to your organisation and the CUSTOMER! Or perhaps not - One cop out is that in your fast moving market segment, strategy doesn’t matter ... and anyhow it all sounds a bit academic, not the stuff from THE UNIVERSITY OF LIFE! But, strategy is nothing much more than a ‘to do’ list and HOW to do it, a statement of intent over usually a 3 to 5 year period. It has to be malleable, things change, these days very quickly, and business strategy needs to be written in such a way that the organisation becomes fleet of foot to cope with any challenges and opportunities the business environment will present us. | A practical underpinning statement about strategy: | Long-range outlook - Achieving long term quality and market leadership requires an organisation to have a strong future orientation and a willingness to make long-term commitments to customer, employees, suppliers, stakeholders and the community. Planning needs to determine or anticipate many types of changes including those that may affect customers’ expectations of products and services, technological developments, changing customer segments, evolving regulatory requirements and community/social expectations, and thrusts by competitors. Plans, strategies, and resource allocations needs to reflect these commitments and changes. Measuring Corporate Excellence - the European Quality Award by Chris Hake. Pub:Chapman & Hall. |
For the people in the organisation, strategy enables very clear sign posts to be put up telling everyone which direction we’re all going in - Mission Statements, Company Values . . . . you know, senior management effectively communicating with their people - to be fair, virtually the norm nowadays - remember those bad old days when organisational knowledge was power and often used against you - when in actuality you and the senior management group both worked for the same organisation for pity sake! So how do we start, or rather how do we become even more strategically focused?... if you’ve read down to here, you are already a strategically thinking animal! STEWARDSHIP OF STRATEGY You may have the company car, mobile phone, client lists, support staff ( ‘support!’ yes I know this might be testing your memory), company reputation etc., which enables you to do the norm of achieving the business’s short term tactical goals. However, all those resources are a gift to you and needs to be balanced with utilising your stewardship of that resource to develop step change or whole strategy contributions, even where the outcome of such development may extend beyond your account/customer ownership tenure or well beyond the twelve month target you’re working hard with at present. To think as a senior manager in your own organisation really does enable your senior client contacts to recognise that you have the breadth to make that vital contribution to their effectiveness. | Time for a benefit statement: | Whilst I’m here I really am going to fit all this into the organisation’s strategy ↑ Whilst I’m here I’ll work to my objectives ↑ Whilst I’m here I’m going to make a difference ↑ Whilst I’m here I’m going to do my best |
... this of course is INTERNALLY FOCUSED, i.e. to you and your organisation ... NOW THEN ... hold on to your seat ... just FLIP this diagram in your mind by adding ... FOR THE CUSTOMER ... at the end of every line ... ending up with STEWARDSHIP of Strategy for the customer. .... just think how your customer perceives you when your ESTABLISHING THE NEEDS questions come from a mindset somewhere near the top steps of the Stewardship Staircase. ... and when you are with a customer, they are not expecting you to be an expert on their strategy, just that what you are offering has a strategic fit to their needs - good questioning in a strategically focused approach signals excellent business relationships - long before you start making those BENEFITS STATEMENTS! OH BY THE WAY, FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE GENUINELY ALREADY DOING THIS, IS YOUR HEART STILL IN IT AND WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER THAT MOTIVATED YOU IN THIS DIRECTION IN THE FIRST PLACE - AND IS IT PAYING OFF? REFLECTION (WHEN WE CAN AFFORD IT) CAN BE SO SELF CONGRATULATING - OH ! GO ON - INDULGE YOURSELF!
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