In Monday’s Blog we talked about H-P’s strategy change and the impact on their brand. We also mentioned Research in Motion and their move to a new operating system for the Blackberry next year.

Changing strategy in and of itself is not a bad thing to do. In fact, it can be critical and necessary for the continued growth of the business. So the question for the business owner is not should we change our strategy, but why is change necessary and how do we protect our brand and use the change as a growth initiative?

Why would you change your strategy? Some reasons include:

• The business is no longer growing
• Market is changing making your product or service less relevant or irrelevant
• New market opportunities are opening that could be more lucrative

Before you change your strategy, it is important to follow these five steps:

1)    Understand the market, what’s changing, why it’s changing and the impact it has on you. This is the analytics part.

2)    Define your approach to changing market conditions and design a response – your new strategy

1. Be sure to clearly define your new target customer base and how you will reach them

3)    Understand the impact your new strategy will have on your current customers

1. Will revenue be negatively impacted? – not only in direct sales but indirect business you get from the customer being your customer
2. What will it do to your reputation in the market?

4)    Understand how the strategy change will impact your brand

1. Will it reinforce your current brand?
2. Will you need to re-brand?

5)    Explain, Explain, Explain – talk to your customers

Your brand is your promise to the market. It’s how customers (and prospects) see you and know you. If your brand is highly personalized customer service, rapid response, attentiveness, your brand will likely still apply as you change your strategy. If your brand is very specific to your current strategy (i.e. we provide computers, and we are moving away from providing computers) then you will need to re-brand along with developing your new strategy. And you need to do it at the same time.

We mentioned the importance of knowing the customer and the impact any change you make may have on your customer. We believe that customer focus and customer knowledge is critically important to your business. In next Monday’s Blog we will discuss – the voice of the customer.

For more information on business growth see our videos, articles and white papers at: www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com

Copyright 2011 Kubica LaForest Consulting

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 8th, 2011 at 12:46 pm and is filed under Brand Building, Business Growth & Entreprenurial Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.