MID-SIZE BUSINESS
(REVENUE BETWEEN 20 TO 200 MILLION)
CONSULTING SERVICES
Re-thinking Your Business Strategy
While the research and literature on business strategies has been robust for a long time, we find all too often that mid-size companies have paid little attention to their “big picture” strategy—where they are going and how they will get there. While business was thriving, the demands of customers often drove the business…not the strategy. Sometimes that hard work was sidelined and rarely was turned into a tactical action plan. And staff often did not know what the strategy was or if their efforts were on-strategy or not.
When Smith Business Consulting Group works with companies, “where you are going” becomes critical in the change process. Without a clear understanding of this, it is very difficult to align your organization and investments to find new clients and new market space, and to reinvent the skills, processes and talent
you have today so you’ll have what you’ll need tomorrow.
We begin our process by re-thinking the “big picture” strategy. We challenge all of its underlying premises to help you break through the barriers of yesterdays' thinking and begin to see opportunities in new ways.
Then we help you turn it into a business process so you and your team can know when you are doing something on strategy and when you are driven by other choices. We help you set up strategic councils, allocate resources and time to build that strategy, and teach your team how to think about the “big picture” so that it drives the change you must have in order to grow and remain competitive.
While the research and literature on business strategies has been robust for a long time, we find all too often that mid-size companies have paid little attention to their “big picture” strategy—where they are going and how they will get there. While business was thriving, the demands of customers often drove the business…not the strategy. Sometimes that hard work was sidelined and rarely was turned into a tactical action plan. And staff often did not know what the strategy was or if their efforts were on-strategy or not.
When Smith Business Consulting Group works with companies, “where you are going” becomes critical in the change process. Without a clear understanding of this, it is very difficult to align your organization and investments to find new clients and new market space, and to reinvent the skills, processes and talent
you have today so you’ll have what you’ll need tomorrow.
We begin our process by re-thinking the “big picture” strategy. We challenge all of its underlying premises to help you break through the barriers of yesterdays' thinking and begin to see opportunities in new ways.
Then we help you turn it into a business process so you and your team can know when you are doing something on strategy and when you are driven by other choices. We help you set up strategic councils, allocate resources and time to build that strategy, and teach your team how to think about the “big picture” so that it drives the change you must have in order to grow and remain competitive.
Re-thinking Your Customers
All too often my clients found their companies’ growth depended on the success of their clients. While many have sales representatives in the field, new business was often difficult to pry away from a competitor. In this zero-sum game, some won and some lost but few really got ahead. If your market is growing, you can as well. But if your market is saturated and is becoming commoditized, you have to re-think your customer strategy.
It is no longer how to get more of the same customers using the same marketing, branding, and product designs as before. Even the pricing models need to be re-thought.
Before you stands a large market of un-tapped people who are solving their needs with alternatives to what you are providing-not a competitive substitute but really a different solution.
In other words:
Smith Business Consulting Group specializes in working with you to find those new markets, to re-think your products and services, operations, and pricing, in order to create demand in markets that have never been thought of for your industry.
All too often my clients found their companies’ growth depended on the success of their clients. While many have sales representatives in the field, new business was often difficult to pry away from a competitor. In this zero-sum game, some won and some lost but few really got ahead. If your market is growing, you can as well. But if your market is saturated and is becoming commoditized, you have to re-think your customer strategy.
It is no longer how to get more of the same customers using the same marketing, branding, and product designs as before. Even the pricing models need to be re-thought.
Before you stands a large market of un-tapped people who are solving their needs with alternatives to what you are providing-not a competitive substitute but really a different solution.
In other words:
- if you sell medical books to emerging doctors, you might find yourself trying to figure out how to capture an audience of physicians that is quite happy using on-line resources rather than books.
- If you are in the customer care business, you might find that many potential customers are doing their customer care in-house rather than out-sourcing it. What services could you provide that would help them do a better job regardless of where customer care is done?
- What if you are in the B2C business? How could you rethink your services for a B2B sector?
- If you are a printer, how will you take advantage of the new digital options and the on-demand solutions that are appearing?
Smith Business Consulting Group specializes in working with you to find those new markets, to re-think your products and services, operations, and pricing, in order to create demand in markets that have never been thought of for your industry.
Re-thinking Your Organization
In today’s business environment, long-held certainties about how to organize your business are being reevaluated if not completely revamped. As we have seen from client situations, long-held beliefs are being challenged and the allocation of investment and resources need to be totally re-thought. Some of the questions being asked are also ones you may be thinking about:
So, how can we help you re-think how you do things today and how you can do them better tomorrow? Can we show you how to create new revenue streams by leveraging the systems you already have in place? For example:
In today’s business environment, long-held certainties about how to organize your business are being reevaluated if not completely revamped. As we have seen from client situations, long-held beliefs are being challenged and the allocation of investment and resources need to be totally re-thought. Some of the questions being asked are also ones you may be thinking about:
- Should we be vertically integrated?
- Should we be a manufacturer as well as a designer or engineer?
- Why do we have our own in-sourced customer care unit? What should we outsource?
- Where should we have strategic alliances?
- How could we generate more income from a back office that has been custom-designed for us?
So, how can we help you re-think how you do things today and how you can do them better tomorrow? Can we show you how to create new revenue streams by leveraging the systems you already have in place? For example:
- Doctors with excellent back-office operations-these might be highly valued by other doctors without this capability.
- Your database list might be very valuable to others.
- You may have not told your story to enough of the right people and need to rethink your marketing strategy.
Finding a New Market Space
If you have built your current strategy from a more traditional framework, you probably looked at how to differentiate yourself from your competition to serve a segment of a market with better value, better pricing, better efficiency, better service, or some similar thought processes. Needs-based positioning is very useful in a growing market where your point of difference can add meaningful value to current users of a particular solution.
But what if the market has become saturated? And demand is simply not there? Some of our case studies are revealing:
Second, you need to look across other industries. If you are in a B2B business, spend time with the end user of your customer’s products. If you sell in retail establishments, spend time in a mall or at sporting events. Set up cameras in stores, banks, physician offices, and other venues so you can see what is actually happening. Cross-cultural comparisons become very helpful in opening your mind to new needs and new ways to solve old ones.
Third, look for big markets. Segmentation has value, but often big opportunities are right there if you think about them. (Yellow tail) wine has had phenomenal success pursuing non-wine drinkers-and 85% of Americans are designated as non-wine drinkers.
If you have built your current strategy from a more traditional framework, you probably looked at how to differentiate yourself from your competition to serve a segment of a market with better value, better pricing, better efficiency, better service, or some similar thought processes. Needs-based positioning is very useful in a growing market where your point of difference can add meaningful value to current users of a particular solution.
But what if the market has become saturated? And demand is simply not there? Some of our case studies are revealing:
- A manufacturer of exceptional chocolates examined his distribution retailers and the spas where he was growing a new audience. As we spoke, what became clear was the many ways he could penetrate new markets and how cross-channel marketing could tap new users for his wonderful products.
- When his executive team went exploring, a client in the customer care business discovered there were many people who could use his services but chose alternate ones-even though some were more costly, less sophisticated, and more difficult to sustain.
- A Point of Purchase client discovered all sorts of new ideas when he spoke with UPS regarding an entirely different industry.
Second, you need to look across other industries. If you are in a B2B business, spend time with the end user of your customer’s products. If you sell in retail establishments, spend time in a mall or at sporting events. Set up cameras in stores, banks, physician offices, and other venues so you can see what is actually happening. Cross-cultural comparisons become very helpful in opening your mind to new needs and new ways to solve old ones.
Third, look for big markets. Segmentation has value, but often big opportunities are right there if you think about them. (Yellow tail) wine has had phenomenal success pursuing non-wine drinkers-and 85% of Americans are designated as non-wine drinkers.
Building Your Customer Experience
No longer is it just the product or the service that customers desire–instead it is the entire customer experience that sells your product. And it is an integrated experience across many channels, from the in-person contact to the online.
People buy with emotions and justify with logic.
And it isn’t in just some industries. From healthcare to online shopping, customers “see and feel” your products and then buy with their emotions, justifying their decisions with the facts and logic that support their choice. Neuroscience research is helping us to understand why that is so powerful. The “picture” or the “story” or the “experience” are what are really motivating those choices—much more so than just the facts and features.
While there are many ways you can adapt your customer experience as your brand and business are changing, we suspect that most times your customer is the last to know. Let us urge you to begin with that customer and collaborate in the creation of a meaningful, focused and differentiated experience that will express your business’s commitment to them as you respond to the changes that you believe are important to them.
Smith Business Consulting Group will work with you to adapt to changing times, reinvent your company, add value in innovative ways, we help you ensure that your customer experience is aligned with those changes. At times that experience might actually be the basis for a new brand that you discover.
No longer is it just the product or the service that customers desire–instead it is the entire customer experience that sells your product. And it is an integrated experience across many channels, from the in-person contact to the online.
People buy with emotions and justify with logic.
And it isn’t in just some industries. From healthcare to online shopping, customers “see and feel” your products and then buy with their emotions, justifying their decisions with the facts and logic that support their choice. Neuroscience research is helping us to understand why that is so powerful. The “picture” or the “story” or the “experience” are what are really motivating those choices—much more so than just the facts and features.
While there are many ways you can adapt your customer experience as your brand and business are changing, we suspect that most times your customer is the last to know. Let us urge you to begin with that customer and collaborate in the creation of a meaningful, focused and differentiated experience that will express your business’s commitment to them as you respond to the changes that you believe are important to them.
Smith Business Consulting Group will work with you to adapt to changing times, reinvent your company, add value in innovative ways, we help you ensure that your customer experience is aligned with those changes. At times that experience might actually be the basis for a new brand that you discover.
Testing Your New Ideas
Research has shown that those who emerge with the best ideas and innovations are usually those who have the most ideas. It isn’t a single “aha” moment that leads to great thinking. It is a lot of ideas, often from different disciplines and industries that intersect and lead to a brilliant “epiphany” –the one idea we might finally see after the work is done. But how do you get to that great idea?
Smith Business Consulting Group encourages our clients to build robust idea banks. We show them how to engage their entire operation in the innovation and idea-generation process. And then we develop a process for connecting the “dots” so the ideas can become great opportunities that can eventually be tested.
All too often the ideas might be right there before you. Our goal is to help you find them.
Research has shown that those who emerge with the best ideas and innovations are usually those who have the most ideas. It isn’t a single “aha” moment that leads to great thinking. It is a lot of ideas, often from different disciplines and industries that intersect and lead to a brilliant “epiphany” –the one idea we might finally see after the work is done. But how do you get to that great idea?
Smith Business Consulting Group encourages our clients to build robust idea banks. We show them how to engage their entire operation in the innovation and idea-generation process. And then we develop a process for connecting the “dots” so the ideas can become great opportunities that can eventually be tested.
All too often the ideas might be right there before you. Our goal is to help you find them.
Building Your Brand
Branding is a critical part of the process when you are considering changing your business. Branding answers the question “Why You?” And the internal brand, the one that you live today, will be changing at the same time you are developing a new market, creating new demand, and building a new reason “why you.” The brain is happier when it has a picture that makes sense of the facts and how they work together to provide a particular solution. The branding story is that picture.
Branding is as important to and mid-size companies and entrepreneurs as it is for large corporations. This is often what gets left out when a market is changing, but that is precisely when the story you are telling becomes the most critical.
Branding is a critical part of the process when you are considering changing your business. Branding answers the question “Why You?” And the internal brand, the one that you live today, will be changing at the same time you are developing a new market, creating new demand, and building a new reason “why you.” The brain is happier when it has a picture that makes sense of the facts and how they work together to provide a particular solution. The branding story is that picture.
Branding is as important to and mid-size companies and entrepreneurs as it is for large corporations. This is often what gets left out when a market is changing, but that is precisely when the story you are telling becomes the most critical.
We would like to invite you to discuss your business and find out more about all that Smith Business Consulting Group can do for you,
contact us or (248) 553-7000.
contact us or (248) 553-7000.
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Accelerating Innovation In Medium-Sized Businesses
1) Innovation will only be achieved in an organization that has in place the culture to support it. Medium-sized firms have the skills and competences for discovery in abundance (playful cultures, minimal bureaucracy, freedom to experiment etc).
2) Begin simply by writing down ideas that you think will help to promote a culture of innovation and set about making them happen.
3) Be clear about who has responsibility for leading the innovation agenda and provide them with the support to do it. Too often leadership teams proclaim that we must be innovative yet they fail to define who we is. An absence of any activity and ‘social loafing’ is the outcome, the notion that somebody else will do it.
4) Remember that innovation isn’t about inventing the next iPod or Smartphone. Recognize that there are many different types of innovation such as product innovation, process innovation, technological innovation and business model innovation.
5) The tenet of any good strategy is focus and being action-specific. The challenge is to translate the general goal into tangible actions. Identify owners, responsibilities and timescales then progress can be tracked and evaluated.
2) Begin simply by writing down ideas that you think will help to promote a culture of innovation and set about making them happen.
3) Be clear about who has responsibility for leading the innovation agenda and provide them with the support to do it. Too often leadership teams proclaim that we must be innovative yet they fail to define who we is. An absence of any activity and ‘social loafing’ is the outcome, the notion that somebody else will do it.
4) Remember that innovation isn’t about inventing the next iPod or Smartphone. Recognize that there are many different types of innovation such as product innovation, process innovation, technological innovation and business model innovation.
5) The tenet of any good strategy is focus and being action-specific. The challenge is to translate the general goal into tangible actions. Identify owners, responsibilities and timescales then progress can be tracked and evaluated.
For Help With Unleashing Your Company's Innovative Potential,
Contact Us Or Call (248) 553-7000 Today.
Contact Us Or Call (248) 553-7000 Today.
SMITH BUSINESS CONSULTING GROUP
Business Development, Marketing & Management Consultants
Specializing In Start Up, Small And Mid Size Business Consulting
248-553-7000
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