Leaders Letter 116
Go back to basics - realign what you are, what you’re solving and who you are solving for.
Dear leaders, you would be surprised how many businesses are struggling with who they are, what they should be offering and why they should be offering their product or services.
In recent weeks, I have spoken to a number of CEOs and Marketing leads and they are at a crossroads, unsure if they are in the right market, messaging the right way and actually adding value.
Something I recommend all businesses to go through is a super simple six-question process.
This is something I typically run through right at the beginning of workshops but in this current climate and the number of fears people have, here are the six questions you will want to visit and gain alignment over. This is particularly useful if you are due a long-range planning meeting or you have your annual operating plan meeting coming up.
You would have seen iterations of these questions in popular business canvas, something to keep in mind, canvas are completed and then forgotten about, this is why you should record the decision-making process and then summarise at the end of the session (remember to add this to your decision document)
(And yes, these are deliberately simple to make you think and revisit your core fundamental beliefs and you have to answer these questions in order 1 down to 6)
Problems: What are the top 3 problems you are actually solving?
Needs Solving: Why are these problems solving your customer's needs?
Customers: Who are the target customers?
Selling Problem Solves: How are you actually selling the problems you’re solving?
Unique: What are you uniquely offering?
Find: How are customers going to find or discover you?
Something to keep in mind, these questions are deliberately simple questions to focus business leads, the more simple the questions are, the better the answers tend to be, the trick with this exercise is to ensure it fits on one a3 piece of paper and the document to act as a compass moving forward.
So this week, your plan of action: plan this session with your leadership team and even give the 6 questions a go and see where you land, if you cannot answer these questions I would suggest you really drive this session forward as quickly as possible (if not everyone can answer this the same way you have a real alignment issue)
Thanks and have a great week ahead,
Danny Denhard
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