You need vision?

Many company owners (more often owner/founders) question the vision setting process of strategic planning. Why? People who found companies are often gifted with a sense of what the market needs and while they are very visionary they are often filled with too much vision and end up keeping too many visions in place on the belief that they will be able to take advantage of a wide range of opportunities as the occur.

Consequently many companies do not have a formal vision that directs the resources of the company as it is viewed as too restrictive or limiting for the business that the company tries to take. They focus on mission, providing the market with capabilities and operate in a reactive state to grab what many would call low hanging fruit. Typically cost of sales is high for this type of business due the inability to correctly forecast demand and gross margins are not maximized.

This multi-vision mission approach can be very confusing to a customer company when they are looking for a strategic partner. Companies looking to sell to this type of customer and be the partner of choice take the time to form a vision of where they are going and carefully craft an intentional deployment of resources to achieve their vision. Companies that can demonstrate that they are committed and invested in one vision, not standing on the sidelines trying to grab anything that comes on the market in the short term, are more likely to convince a customer that they positioned to be a long term strategic partner. A vision that creates a compelling story of where the company will be in the future along with past and current activities that validate the ability and progression toward achieving the vision is fundamental in selling a strategic relationship.

One company that I worked with several years ago tried to get by just doing the mission level of strategic planning. After several attempts to sell to a customer using a “capabilities” sell for their multiple business lines the owner recognized that he needed a stronger future-directed message of “vision” to convince his targeted customers of where his company was going to take them. The next planning cycle focused on the vision message and they were able to craft a single sentence tag line that clearly communicated what business they were in. This process resulted in changes in the daily investment of the owner to work on his business and not just in his business. Now four years later the business direction of the company is tied to the vision and the customers that have been established that have selected the owners company strategically as a trusted value-add partner.

What is your commitment to your vision? Is it a token message not representing the commitment of your strategic resources? Commit to a compelling vision if you want to be a strategic partner to your customers. You need vision!