A clear, galvanizing vision serves as the bedrock for enduring business growth. We instill unity by articulating our niche, ideal customer, and commitment to guarantees. Documented strategically, this aligns our entire organization.
Niche: Our niche establishes our special value. Rather than generic positioning, analyze the precise market gaps you fill better than anyone. Refine that advantage into a niche spotlighting your excellence. Highlighting differentiation attracts ideal clients and provides employee fulfillment. We learned our niche by asking customers and partners what made us special. For instance, we gained clarity on our niche by asking current and past customers and partners what **they** thought made us special. Needless to say, we learned a lot.
Target Market: Next, profile your ideal customer beyond basic demographic or firmographic filters. Outline the specific business challenges your niche solves. Detail the outcomes, objectives and needs you uniquely provide. This further focuses marketing and sales efforts on best-fit prospects. At ICS, we are a mid-tier systems integrator for the Department of Defense, meaning we assemble world class teams and solutions for a broad range of Enterprise IT requirements and missions. After many conversations with our customers, we arrived at a customer profile of
“Our target customers are characterized by being: Value Oriented, Mission Focused, and see IT as a Strategic enablers, not a commodity”
We use this profile when filtering which customers we will target.
Guarantee: Offer your customers a guarantee – a measurable mission impact based on your niche. Set realistically bold assurances to push performance. This builds external trust and ensures internal outcomes focus. Because many of our customers have dynamic, changing mission needs that may not have been forseen in the original requirement, we guarantee our customers that we will be agile and flexible as their mission needs change:
“We say yes until we have to say no… or ‘Yes but…’
Communicate your vision consistently, embedding elements externally and internally. Celebrate guarantee fulfillment, grounding teams in achievement. Carefully evaluate opportunities outside your vision, avoiding fragmentation despite short-term gains.
Regularly refine your beachhead vision as you evolve. Defining your niche and customer focus provides a foundation for growth. Articulate specific commitments to keep teams united in decisions and priorities amidst scaling. Vision alignment serves as the bedrock enabling enduring expansion.
How do you create and evolve a vision aligning your company’s niche and guarantees to customer needs?
