For this to be true, what needs to happen?

When I start to work with a new business looking for marketing advice, we often start by me asking them to make it clear, what exactly is their goal for the next 18 months. 

• We want new customers to stay with us longer.
• We want existing customers to give us warm introductions and recommendations.
• We want our overall revenue to grow by double digits.
• We want to reduce our SKU’s, so our operation focuses on the top items.
• We aren’t sure our marketing is reaching the right decision maker.

Once consensus on one or two goals is clear, I’ll ask a simple question:

What needs to happen, for this to be true?

Change the Framework 

Instead of having people defend an idea, we change the framework to ask “what would have to be true” for us to achieve our goal.

Reframing allows us to create a list of things that we might want to tackle to help build the environment to achieve our goal. Instead of digging in their heels, team members are collaborating.

I try to stay away from putting on our list things like sales needs to do their job better or finance leads to loosen up the strings on funds. We focus on the future state or condition, not the current situation.

I want to create a list like:

• Customers get more than they expect from us. We go beyond the sale to deliver extra value.
• We find inventive ways to ask for referrals that make it easy for customers to recommend us.
• Our focus is on specific numbers – like if we can add 13 new accounts per month, we can achieve our 18-month goal. It is specific, and we track it.
• We eliminate resistance to cutting out SKU’s by convincing ourselves that more choices don’t bring in more profits. We look closely at the hidden costs of our inventory.
• We get new evidence or proof. We test our message, and who we communicate it to so we can learn something new.

If you can gain consensus on a goal, then you can articulate all the possible things that need to be true to achieve that goal.

What has to change internally in your company’s approach to the market? How do you tell your customers that story? How do you focus on the big rocks, not the little pebbles?

A Real World Example

A client of mine had a dozen goals, but tops on their list were to determine if their marketing focuses on the right audience. They had a gut feeling that they may be talking to the wrong person at most of the businesses they were approaching. Somehow as things changed over five years, they hadn’t adapted as they got stuck in a pattern of doing what was comfortable and familiar. They wondered if they needed to change who they focused their message toward because those positions held the purse strings.

We listed those things that would need to be true to determine if we were, in fact, talking with the right person (the real decision maker). So, we focused our resources on a series of tests to see if we could learn something by altering how we communicate our message and, what we said.

What happens was that our little experiment gave us some new evidence. What became true was that if we reached into organizations through finance instead of HR, they would be more receptive. We recreated a message around value to the company, not just functionality to a different department.

As we saw several new orders start coming in, we had a hunch, which we were on the right path.

Thought Exercise

Try this on your business.

See if you can get alignment on a singular goal that is priority number one.

That isn’t easy, and it can take time. As the goal becomes clear, ask several colleagues to independently give you one suggestion of what needs to be true, for this to happen.

When the “things to be true” are stated in a simple language, without a lot of jargon, everyone can buy into the approach. If you can make most of those things on the list true, you may be able to achieve the stated goal. Create an approach where many of these things are true.

One of my favorite ways to rethink strategy is to ask, what needs to be true to achieve a goal.

What needs to be true to achieve your goals? I can help. Let’s connect jeffslater@themarketingsage.com or 919 720 0995 or set up a time to talk via my calendar. I sell seasoned advice.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash