With many products and services being so similar in characteristics it can become very difficult to differentiate a product or service sufficiently enough to make it stand out and entice the consumer or organisation to shift their allegiances over to another company. Should companies therefore make more use of their augmented product and surrounding services?
In an economic downturn supply often exceeds demand and it's during this period that a company's customers are under the greatest threat of being poached by the competition. This is because when belt tightening a company often has fewer foot soldiers on the ground and it is not unusual for a competitor to take advantage of this vulnerability by pouncing on a customer who has been left with no one to look after them.
Guerrilla tactics used by the competition
Competitors, then finding that they are unopposed, simply walk in and take a company's customers away and have them nicely tucked up in bed before the unsuspecting company knows what's happened. When they finally realise, it's too late to take any further action as their once supposedly loyal customer has gone over to the other side. Further more losing valuable customers from competitors through poor internal management can be particularly frustrating for those sales people still retained by their company and finding themselves under extreme pressure to attract new customers. It can be soul destroying when finally landing that difficult sale only to see existing ones falling off the other end
The Golden Rule
The golden rule therefore is that before prospecting for new business, plug the holes in internal and external processes to ensure that those customers that you do have stay loyal and don't walk away. This is particularly important as getting new customers on board can be an expensive process and it costs far less to look after and retain existing ones.
Identifying new customers and markets is much easier and less expensive than it used to be thanks to the Internet, as there is a wealth of information for companies to tap in to. For those company's who simply don't have the time to conduct their own market research, this can be carried out for them by an external marketing company for a relatively small amount of money.
When Planning Under Pressure: The Strategic Choice Approach by John Friend and Allen Hickling appeared in 1987, it was the first mature exposition of the Strategic Choice Approach. Since then, the approach has been gathering support among decision makers, while also becoming widely taught in management, planning and policy schools.
A repetitive technique used for complex problems and their sub-problems, consisting of 4 basic principles
Shaping, involves identifying the problem areas
Designing, recognising what can be done, looking at possibilities and drawbacks.
Comparing, various ideas, evaluating the best possible way forward
Choosing, the best ideas for solving the problems. Compiling a plan of action, acknowledging any uncertainties.
My question is...
Is this approach relevant and is strategic choice just amounting to common sense?
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