Quotes About Strategy

Since he was much weaker than his enemy, he could afford to display no weakness at all.

There is no need to outrun the lion. All that is necessary for a man to do in order to survive is to outrun his friends.

So in the development of your Marketing Strategy, it is absolutely imperative that you forget about your dreams, forget about your visions, forget about your interests, forget about what you want—forget about everything but your customer!

1. Your Primary Aim 2. Your Strategic Objective 3. Your Organizational Strategy 4. Your Management Strategy 5. Your People Strategy 6. Your Marketing Strategy 7. Your Systems Strategy

seen from the appropriate perspective, the entire business process by which your company does what it does is a marketing process.

Thus, the Entrepreneurial Model does not start with a picture of the business to be created but of the customer for whom the business is to be created. It understands that without a clear picture of that customer, no business can succeed.

If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster. —Steven R. Covey

Said another way, the Entrepreneurial Model has less to do with what's done in a business and more to do with how it's done. The commodity isn't what's important—the way it's delivered is. When The Entrepreneur creates the model

To The Entrepreneur, the business is the product.

the key is to plan, envision, and articulate what you see in the future both for yourself and for your employees. Because if you don't articulate it—I mean, write it down, clearly, so others can understand it—

the Entrepreneurial Model does not start with a picture of the business to be created but of the customer for whom the business is to be created.

Most business founders believe that the success of a business resides in the success of the product it sells.

In other words, pretend that you are going to franchise your business. (Note: I said pretend. I'm not saying that you should. That isn't the point here—unless, of course, you want it to be.)

Your Business Development Program is the vehicle through which you can create your Franchise Prototype. The Program is composed of seven distinct steps: 1. Your Primary Aim 2. Your Strategic Objective 3. Your Organizational Strategy 4. Your Management Strategy 5. Your People Strategy 6. Your Marketing Strategy 7. Your Systems Strategy

The question you need to keep asking yourself is: How can I give my customer the results he wants systematically rather than personally? Put

it's not the commodity or the work itself that is important. What's important is the business: how it looks, how it acts, how it does what it is intended to do.

You must be able to forecast the Flow. You must have a Flow Plan that helps you gain a clear vision of what's out there next month and the month after that.

Anthony Greenbank, who said in The Book of Survival, "To live through an impossible situation, you don't need the reflexes of a Grand Prix driver, the muscles of a Hercules, the mind of an Einstein. You simply need to know what to do.

Your Business Strategy and Plan are a way of communicating to anyone you must communicate to the direction your business is going, how it intends to get there, and the specific benchmarks it will need to hit in order for the Strategy and Plan to work.

The first standard of your Strategic Objective is money. Gross revenues. How big is your vision? How big will your company be when it's finally done? Will it be a $300,000 company? A million-dollar company? A $500-million company?

The Entrepreneur's boundary is a function of how many managers he can engage in pursuit of his vision.

Every day at IBM was a day devoted to business development, not doing business.

And because it starts that way, it is more likely to continue that way. And therein resides the true difference between an Adolescent company, where everything is left up to chance, and a Mature company, where there is a vision against which the present is shaped.

It reveals an understanding of what makes a great business great. It also tells us what makes all other businesses survivable at their best; intolerable at their worst.