Strategic Management

So, you’ve launched a sales strategy, marketing strategy, customer relations strategy, business development strategy, and 34 other strategies… Now what? You’ve built a route to your peak, avoided obstacles, scaled your summit, and upon arrival realize that you’ve exhausted all consumable resources. Foresight is a key skill not only for scaling mountains but also for managing your strategies post-launch. In this post, we’ll discuss how to measure the success of your already launched strategies, and some tips on how to adjust them when necessary.

The key points to consider when measuring your launched strategies are:

Communication
Data
Feedback (internally and externally)
New information or issues that arise with an unstable strategy
Inspection and management

Communication

Regular communication with your team is a must. How often you meet varies based on how complex your strategy is, but the main point to keep in mind is that clear communication fosters ongoing success. If your strategy meetings are held infrequently (quarterly or less often), it is wise to use other communication mediums like email or phone calls to stay up to date.

Data

The data refers to the state of the company. If you’re measuring data on your sales strategy, for instance, you may want to review how much revenue your sales team has generated, in what sales territories they’ve generated the most/least, and perhaps any competitor movement in the market. If you’re measuring data on a social media or email campaign, you may want to review how many clicks your emails are receiving, or what links your followers gravitate toward. Keep tracking the data as it changes and communicates key information to the team. Data is critical and helps separate what we feel may be happening from what is happening. In other words, you may feel like a specific campaign is producing great results, but the hard data could prove you wrong. It’s important to base strategic decisions on that data.

Feedback

Asking for and incorporating feedback from the team when adapting your strategy is a healthy practice for gaining a holistic view of the progress of the strategy. Allow for easy feedback to come to you from the group, whether in meetings, responses to emails, memos, company newsletters, etc. This feedback should also be data-driven, as opposed to being emotionally driven.

New Information

When new information surfaces, continue to task your team and not take everything on yourself. Once new information is analyzed, present the new data to the team so they can formulate ideas and suggestions on how to incorporate the data and its impacts on the strategy. A good way to do this is in written form, with a gap in time, followed by a meeting where the new ideas can be presented and captured. After a decision is made, the strategy can be amended and re-agreed upon to make sure everyone is on the same page.

Inspection and Measurement

Continue to inspect, measure, and report the results as you progress, and review and edit your strategy at regular intervals to keep it fresh and relevant.

For more information on measuring strategic success, get in touch with one of our Guides.

His guidance, leadership, and friendship are PRICELESS

He has mentored me to achieve amazing professional goals without losing sight of the most important part of my life as a wife and mother. His guidance, leadership, and friendship are PRICELESS!!

Brian is a Full Service Mentor

Over the years, Brian has not only mentored the sales team, but also our Department Managers throughout the corporation developing personal goals, department goals, leadership skills, and execution.

A Great Motivator

He has been a great motivator for me, my team, and our organization’s management team. Outside of the impressive sales increase, there is an abundance of projects and initiatives that Brian has successfully led I would like to highlight some of them that ultimately changed my life both professionally and personally.

Learned How to Grow Territory

During the time I work with Brian, he challenged me, showed me how to sell and how to win in almost any circumstance. Brian helped me grow my sales territory (Chicago) from nothing to a $1,000,000+ book of business.

The Summit Solutions is not a one-fits-all process

Is the Summit Solutions a one-fits-all process that will lead to selling more? No, there are plenty of national programs with regional support that will sell you on that. I will tell you from my experience, they are outdated, not personalized, and don’t work. They typically also only focus on the sales department. Brian’s method is to work with the whole organization, while stressing the importance of creating a company culture that people want to be a part of.

As the VP Sales Manager, I was initially skeptical

As the VP Sales Manager, I was initially skeptical and guarded as to why we had to bring in an outside sales expert. I perceived this as an insult to my abilities and the performance of our team. Today I can honestly say that the association, teachings, and concepts Brian presented were the BEST thing to happen to our Company, myself, and our team.

When we started with Summit Learning Solutions we had 62 employees

When we started with Summit Learning Solutions we had 62 employees mostly serving the state of Michigan. Now, we have nearly 200 employees serving 17 states; and we’re still growing consistently. Moreover, when we started with Summit we sold about 3-5 Million a year in new business; now we sell 13 Million a year in new business.

They sourced and hired our first-ever sales team

They sourced and hired our first-ever sales team and created the sales and marketing plan to start the process. They designed our sales team’s compensation plans, trained them on appropriate sales methodology, and lead our overall strategy. Candidly, we thought they were way too optimistic in their sales projections. It turns out they undersold the possibilities. The program was very successful, very fast.

We are a better, healthier, and the more performance-driven company

We are a better, healthier, and the more performance-driven company now thanks to Brian’s training and support. Most importantly, it’s more profitable.