A lot has been written about how to find the vision, mission and purpose of a company.
We argue the only vision that really matters is the one your most valuable customers can get excited by.
Too many corporate vision exercises end in waffle that buyers struggle to relate to, such as promising to change the future of X, or reinvent Y.
Our process is different
Armed with a BS detector, we explore how the vision of the company (in whatever form it’s communicated) resonates with the target customers.
A simple way to look at it is in this handy venn.
Ask: what do you want to see in the world that your prospects would like to see too?
Linkedin wants to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful. Which professional wouldn’t want those two things.
State a vision (something you’re working to) and then detail goal(s) to achieve. Make them tangible, measurable, timed outcomes you need to deliver to get you each step of the way there.
Tesla wants to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport (their vision) by bringing compelling mass market electric cars to market as soon as possible (their timed-ish goal).
They use the word Mission for all of this. But we prefer to create an exciting vision for the future and then list ‘goals’ as the way to achieve it because everyone knows what goals are.
Insights to guide your Vision
How do you know if customers and prospects want what you want?
Ask them. We always conduct one to one interviews to gather fresh insights for positioning B2B businesses. We use industry data, customer surveys, sales call transcripts and other sources too. But the richest most valuable source of new insight is from prospects and customers.
So the Vision isn’t the start of the process (even though we capture it from founders first). It’s actually one of the last. The Vision has to evolve to meet the needs of the market while still being something you strongly, passionately believe in.
This is counter to the common belief that the founder’s Vision is sacred. For most investors, making money is sacred. So the Vision should be commercially viable and tested. We help founders evolve their Vision – to ensure it’s pointing the business in the right direction.
Listen to the full episode below
Ready to align your strategy with your customers’ goals and inspire? Contact us.