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If
you don’t know, your customers surely don’t. More importantly, if you
don’t know, you won’t be able to tell your customers why they should
choose you over your competitors. Answering this simple question is critical
to forming a mission statement and creating your marketing strategy.
Undoubtedly
when you decided to start your business you had an inspiration. Was it to
provide a service or product better, faster or cheaper than what was
currently available? Was it to fill a gap in the marketplace? Perhaps you
were inspired to run a business that people enjoyed working for or that
maintained environmentally and socially responsible ethical standards or
that surpassed existing companies in providing superior customer service.
Whatever your mission, find it and then write it down.
Experience
shows that companies with a clear and ever-present mission statement surpass
their competition and last in the marketplace. Mission statements define and
preserve and strengthen a company’s unique competitive advantages.
Additionally, companies who are clear about who they are and what they do
are less likely to make irrational decisions in response to competition and
fluctuations in the marketplace. However, that does not mean your mission
statement should be inflexible. A good mission statement can lead a company
for 10 to 20 years if time and effort were spent in creating it. However,
re-evaluating your mission from time to time to see if it is still relevant,
significant and appropriate is advised.
You
want to create a statement that you and your team can look to every day and
ask “Am I fulfilling the company’s mission?”
For example, one mission statement could be “to be the leading game
software developer for teens”. A more actionable mission statement would
be “Surpass XYZ games developer in sales, customer experience and speed to
market”. The second mission statement has clear goals and direction, while
the more abstract version would be more appropriate for a vision statement
than a mission statement. The second statement clearly supports the vision
statement.
Think
of Thomas Kincaid, he could have decided to paint bucolic scenes and sell
them in a local gallery, instead he decided his business wasn’t just about
making accessible art. Like Martha Stewart, Ralph Lauren and Eddie Bauer, he
decided his business was about presenting a lifestyle. So he found a way to
mass-produce what seem to be original acrylic paintings, opened franchises
across the US and now sells everything from paintings to knick-knacks to
homes in Thomas Kincaid developments. Now that is the sign of a clean and
clear mission.
You
can distinguish your mission statement by including a call to action. This
is missing in most company mission statements and has several defining and
distinguishing characteristics:
-
It
motivates and generates an emotional reaction from your team
-
It
is easy to understand and translates into what your employees do every
day
-
It
states a goal that can be measured and identified easily
-
It
reflects and is rooted in the competitive environment in which your
company functions
Think
back to this mission statement: “Surpass XYZ games developer in sales,
customer experience and speed to market”, if you run this statement
through the above four qualifications, you will get a yes every time.
When
creating your mission statement, consider these aspects of your business:
-
What
is your company’s history and tradition? How does it influence what
you want to accomplish today and in the long term?
-
How
do you characterize the management philosophy of the company? What input
does management have in the direction of the company?
-
What
distinguishes your company from all of the other companies that perform
the same service or function? How do you already surpass the
competition? What can you do to continue surpassing them?
-
What
goals are realistic when considering the available resources?
-
Where
do you need to improve in order to beat the competition? What are your
competitors doing that you can imitate and improve upon?
If you would like to discuss writing your company’s mission statement further or would like
help with implementing any of the ideas in this article, please contact FVBK
and we would be happy to help you.
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