Building a company to sell it off or converting it into a decacorn, is what most CEOs and business strategists have in mind. Whatever the aim and whichever stage a business be at, most entrepreneurs struggle to settle on a business strategy that fits their idea, work culture, and goals.

They look at what their competitors are doing but often fail to leverage their own USPs. Some may be unable to decide how to web different departments into one strategy, and other times cost becomes a significant inhibitor.

These are bad approaches. May work best in silos. Your strategy must match your goals, your market, the products, and the services you deliver.

Here we break down the path to a robust business strategy into three bits. Each would lead to strategists and C-Suite closer a clearer path and measurable outcomes.

Business strategy professionals need to get these three ingredients together to execute a successful business strategy.

3 Steps of Creating A Business Strategy

#1. Choose your school of thought

What do you ascribe to? More importantly, why? The strategic direction you choose for your business and your reasons for choosing the same are guided by the school of thought.

School of thought is the first thing taught in business schools. There are several of them given the high demand for new ideas in the business community. It clears up a lot of aspects of business strategists. Some of the commonly used strategies include:

• First, to come, last to go – Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

Be the first to the market and ship your products as early as possible. Getting fastest to the field, and receiving market feedback is the idea here.

• The pilot first, launch next – Experimentation

Try your product out in a smaller market first, and then go big, it’s the market entry strategy of this thought.

• Bigger the better – Scaling

If you are sure that the product or solution works, enter to scale it

• Bet on capital and labor – Investment

Get more investment, put more value on the table in the form of capital and labor.

• Blue oceans – Diversification

Keep an eye out for new markets, and capture new needs and business areas.

• Offer and expand – Integration

Merge with others and build your success upon theirs, together with their offerings.

• Intelligence as the Capital – Information Advantage

Information is value. Identify the information valuable to your consumers and build your business on the top of that information superiority. 

• Community as capital – Social Bonds

Build relationships – with customers, partners, employees, and more – and use those bonds as your strategy.

• Common grounds – Win-Win

Make new grounds for your products and offerings by finding common grounds with partners and customers.

• Holding your grounds – Win-Lose

Beat your competition and hold your ground.

#2. Know why perfect business strategies fail

It’s not uncommon for even the best of plans to go down the drain. Most business strategists wonder why even the best-laid plans short. More often than not, the culprit is one: Implementation.

A few common mistakes you must avoid when choosing a strategy:

• Strategy fails when a business owner is trying to develop a strategy without taking in a specialist or business strategy professional. Often the resultant is untraceable, idealist goals.
• When you give goals without the specifics on how to achieve them often leads to a strategy hard to follow.
• When the strategy is not coherent with other operations of the business, it leads to unexpected deadlocks that are hard to resolve on the fly.
• Unpreparedness for small logistics can lead to problems, but it becomes chronic without finishing touches, and an actionable plan.

#3. Select YOUR strategy

Finally, once you have figured a market entry strategy and understood the bottlenecks, draft a business strategy comprising all departments, situation plans, and goals. Ask yourself:  

• Your high-level goals. What are those? Then, are they measurable?
• Your current situation. When you know where you want to reach, take a look at your past and current performance and assess your strengths, drives of success, and opportunities.
• Your mission and vision. Based on your high-level, long-term goals, determine the direction you would like your business to take (vision) and how you are planning to get there (mission).  Study your TA and competitors.

A business strategy is an inquiry into your internal and external environment. Pick up these three questions to assess both.