Читать книгу The B2B Executive Playbook - Sean Geehan - Страница 19

Strategy guru Michael Porter describes strategy as simply “what your firm will and will not do.” That sounds straightforward, but B2B leadership teams that unanimously agree on what their companies should and shouldn’t do are not easy to find. Much more commonly, the strategic planning process in B2B companies is overly complex and too far removed from the marketplace. And in the end, it produces a plan in which the company’s leaders have little or no confidence. Too often, the strategic part of the process gets shortchanged for the planning part. Strategy meetings become sales planning and budgeting sessions, or they get hung up on short-term decision-making, none of which provide long-term direction, much less a plan for sustainable, predictable, profitable growth. It’s no wonder that leadership surveys conducted by McKinsey & Co. have consistently found that 70 percent of global executives are dissatisfied with their strategic planning process.

If they hope to attain sustainable, predictable, profitable growth, B2B companies require strategic plans that account for the nature of revenue concentration, the differentiation of users from decision makers, and the overall complexity of the B2B buying process. Executive customers can provide this focus and build confidence in the strategic planning process and the plan it produces. In Chapter 5, we’ll discuss how B2B companies can utilize their executive customers to drive a market-aligned strategic planning process.