If your business is going through a tough period, it may be time to "pivot" your strategy.
Necessity is the mother of all invention. Many firms have had to pivot their business strategy due to the current market conditions. In order to pivot your strategy, you will need to start by doing your research, reassessing your current business model and building a new approach from there.
Pivoting your strategy may involve targeting a different customer base, new routes to market or even a new range of products and services. If pivoting your strategy pushes you into a new market, you will likely need to re-evaluate your approach to sales, marketing and day to day business processes.
In the current environment, many bricks and mortar businesses have pivoted their strategy to focus on online services, direct to consumer sales and home delivery models.
Once you have evaluated when and where you need to pivot your strategy, you will need to move quickly in order to shift your business to the new model efficiently. Trust the data and insights that you gathered during the planning stage.
Decisive action will help you to avoid wasting time, effort and money. Communicate your new strategy to your people in order to gain their buy-in. Involve them in some of the planning and decision making in order to build their trust and bring them on the journey.
If you can get your team members to buy into the new strategy and really get behind it, you are much more likely to succeed.
Create goals and objectives for your team that align with the new strategic direction of the firm. Don’t try to fix things that aren’t broken. A pivot in strategy doesn’t mean you need to change everything. For example, if you move your business to a new online-only model, you can probably use some of your current processes and procedures for things like sales or order management.
Once you pivot your strategy, ask your customers and staff for feedback. What has worked well, what could work better and what new ideas should you roll out as part of your new strategy? You can use this feedback to refine your new strategy and adopt further refinements.
Scholes Chartered Accountants helps SME's to develop robust business plans as well as providing associated support with strategic planning activities. Contact us today to discuss your requirements, or visit us at our Edinburgh or Kirkwall office.
