Skip to main content

Steps for increasing sales through a strategic vision

share arrow printer bookmark flag

June 16, 2023

This past week, I helped guide a leadership team through the process of defining its strategic vision.

As part of the process, we discussed the tangible value a strategic vision can provide an organization.

First and foremost, it provides a bullseye for all decisions across your company, including talent ones.

A well-defined strategic vision can also be a valuable component in the development of your sales and marketing plan by providing the needed and necessary fundamentals.

Here are a few key elements of a strategic vision and ways they can contribute to an increase in sales.
 
Define the core message
A strategic vision often includes an organization’s core competence – what they are the best at and the reason customers choose them over their competitors.

It’s what makes them unique, different and not vanilla.

Your competence provides the core message you want to communicate through your sales and marketing plan.
 
Identify target markets
Your strategic vision can help organizations prioritize their target markets.

By analyzing gross margin percentages by customer segments, organizations can determine which markets value their competence the most and are willing to pay more for it.

Concentrating on a select number of target markets can enable companies to focus their sales and marketing efforts more effectively.

A finite target market allows organizations to concentrate their resources and deliver a compelling message that resonates with their ideal customers.

Identify geographic target markets
In addition to defining the core message and target markets, a strategic vision includes your geographic target markets.

Organizations identify specific states, regions or countries where they pursue their primary target markets.

Focusing on a select number of target markets within a geographic scope creates a finite target market.
 
Create sales and marketing tools
A strategic vision provides all the information needed to create sales and marketing tools that effectively communicate an organization’s core message to your finite target markets.

These tools can include various tactics, such as social media, content marketing, advertising and direct outreach.

The goal is to deliver the message to your target markets through channels and platforms where they engage. 
 
Aligning talent with a strategic vision
The strategic vision can also drive talent planning – particularly for the sales team.

It helps determine the ideal sales model, whether it involves outbound sales hunters, inside sales representatives or a mix of both.

By aligning the talent plan with the strategic vision, organizations can build a sales team that best supports the sales plan.

This alignment can help ensure the sales team possesses the skills and expertise necessary to effectively engage with the target market and deliver the organization’s message.

Plan vs. no plan
The strategic vision of a business I used to work for created a sales and marketing plan that, in five years, led to an increase in sales from $5 to $30 million.

Core message – Customers chose us because we could change our food packaging lines over faster than anyone else in our industry, which meant they were never out of stock.Target markets – The top 100 U.S.-branded food companies were our primary target market, and they valued our competence the most because they never wanted to be out of stock.Sales and marketing tools – We created sales tools that looked like the food products we could package that had our core message on them.Sales and marketing team talent plan – Our target market of the top 100 branded food companies made structuring our sales and marketing team easy. We needed an experienced marketing person, one sales hunter and four inside/sales farmers to attract, land and expand each customer.
We grew quickly because we had a high-performance team that was effectively communicating our competence to a finite group of companies who valued it.

It became evident our message was resonating with clients because they would pull out the sales and marketing tools we sent them during our meetings with them.

Early in my career, I worked for a company that did not have a strategic vision in place.

Without a clear vision, our sales and marketing efforts lacked a focused message.

Our sales and marketing efforts were all over the place and ineffective.

Our team attempted to develop the strategy so we could write our plan, but there was no buy-in from other leaders in the organization.
Those who plan – profit.
 
Steve Van Remortel is founder/CEO of MyTalentPlanner, chief strategist & talent advisor at Stop the Vanilla, LLC and is a speaker, trainer, advisor and three-time author.

TBN
share arrow printer bookmark flag

Trending View All Trending