Today I’m going to help you get one of the most important parts of your job right. It’s the thing I find most business people struggle with, even though it’s just about the most essential foundation any manager can build. That’s right—today I’m going to get you started on the journey of using intelligent strategy to reach your goals.
Before we do, let’s get real about four buzzwords you probably hear thrown around a lot lately:
1. Strategy
2. Tactics
3. Alignment
4. Integration
They seem to punctuate most conversations I have with every fast-talking sales or marketing manager. But it continues to stun me how few of these senior people actually know the difference between a strategy and a tactic. Getting it wrong can have consequences.
Not only are ‘strategies’ constantly confused with ‘tactics’, but ‘alignment’ is dropped as a mysterious black magic cure for everything from your lagging sales figures to your malfunctioning coffee machine, and ‘integrated’ is perhaps the most misused adjective in corporate history.
But before you toss them all in the jargon bin never to be heard from again, there are a few things you should know.
While alignment is not black magic, it is certainly important. But to illuminate the vital role it plays – or should play – in your organisation, we first have to understand the relationship between strategy and tactics, and how they relate to your greater goals.
Set Your Goals First, then Strategy May Follow
The process begins with goal setting. Simply, your goals are a statement of what you want to achieve. Your goal might be to boost sales by 25 per cent; increase market share by 3 per cent; win 12 new key accounts; or all three.
With your goals set, you can begin to think about implementing a strategy, or a series of strategies, that you’ll use to achieve your goal.
Each strategy will be comprised of a series of tactics – or actions – that must be executed in order to fulfil the strategy and thus achieve your goal.
This is the process of alignment. Each tactic is now a logical step in a set strategy that is aligned to achieving your desired business goals. There are no rash decisions, contradictory actions or rogue elements operating outside of the prescribed framework.
To risk a cliché, everyone is now singing from the same songbook.
Viewed through this lens, it becomes easy to see that setting and executing an aligned strategy is an organisation-wide operation.
Think of it in this way —your marketing strategy will likely require sales and IT to execute predetermined tactics. And staying true to a sales strategy will need marketing to deliver on tactics that fit with the sales manager’s prospecting processes and slip seamlessly into the top of the pipeline.
Competing Interests and the Need for Integration
And here we encounter our fourth buzz word: Integration.
Each business unit must not make the mistake of simply throwing around random tactics that are focused solely on achieving short-term departmental results at the expense of the organisation’s greater business goals.
For example, the marketing department might be appearing to kick goals with a shiny new lead generation campaign, however, if they are failing to deliver the right types of leads, they’ll be at odds with the sales team’s tactics and the greater strategy will fall flat, leaving the ultimate business goal unfulfilled. Doesn’t sound very integrated, does it?
So… the performance of a business unit must be assessed in direct relation to its ability to implement the right tactics that deliver on an integrated strategy that’s in turn aligned to specific business goals.
Got it? Good. Now let’s drive the point home with a few examples.
A Specific Sales Strategy
Let’s suppose your organisation sets a goal to increase sales revenue by 25 per cent next quarter. To achieve such a lofty goal, you’ll need to set some strong sales strategies.
The first strategy might be to focus on converting more high value leads to sales, and a second strategy could be to increase repeat business.
Both strategies will increase your overall sales revenue, but a series of tactics must be assigned to each if they are to be successful.
For example, to convert more high value leads you’ll need to implement tactics such as scoring your leads to identify potential high-value customers; nurturing high-value leads with targeted content that pushes them through the pipeline; and then deploying your best sales reps to close.
To achieve your second strategy of increasing your repeat business, you might choose to implement tactics such as using CRM data to build detailed customer profiles; then using that data to create a proven value proposition for each customer; and finally using your incumbent advantage to remove barriers to purchase and streamline the sales process.
An Inbound Lead Gen Strategy
Now suppose your organisation is taking a responsible approach to keeping your sales team well stocked with warm inbound leads and they’ve set another goal to increase inbound marketing leads by 33 per cent.
The first lead gen strategy might be to increase visitors to your website, and the second might be to convert more website visitors into decent warm leads.
Your tactics for the first strategy could be to identify popular keywords or search terms; then publish regular targeted blog articles; and finally to use your content to build an engaged social media community.
Your tactics to achieve your second strategy might be to create a strong, clear call-to-action on your website; offer downloadable content such as White Papers to capture email addresses and nurture those leads; and to maximise your page load speed to limit site drop offs and bounces.
Every day I work with clients who are striving to bring their sales and marketing functions closer together, yet so many continue to confuse the difference between strategies and tactics and how they relate to the overarching organisations goals.
To get it right and drive real results from your planning work, be clear with your team about the difference between strategies and tactics, and you’ll ensure all their efforts are pulling in the same direction towards your common goals.
