3 Steps For Preparing Your Corporate Strategy To Make The Number in 2016

As we found in this year’s research report, the top 10 percent of companies align their revenue growth models according to a six-step process. Go ahead and download the report here.

Corporate Strategy is the second step in that process. In other words, Corporate’s plan bears a good deal of weight and must be completed before four other teams can develop their strategies.

So, before you flesh out your Corporate strategy, it’s important to understand not just what your team needs to accomplish, but also how your findings fit into the company’s overall revenue growth process.

Here’s what you need to know to prep your Corporate plan for 2016.

Four other departments rely on your Corporate Strategy. Where does Corporate Strategy fit into the hierarchy?

The hierarchy of Strategic Alignment flows as follows:

1. Market Research
2. Corporate Strategy
3. Product Strategy
4. Marketing Strategy
5. Sales Strategy
6. Talent Strategy

According to this methodology, Corporate Strategy depends on the insights from Market Research. And the following four strategies can’t be fleshed out without the Corporate Strategy.

What do I need to accomplish?

The Corporate Strategy must convey how the company’s people, money and time will be allocated in the pursuit of profitable growth.

In other words, this is where the direction for the company is defined. It needs to pull insights from the external marketplace and use those to answer such questions as, “Why do we exist?”, “Which markets will we choose to compete in?”, and “What strategic advantages will we develop?”

These are great questions to ask your own team. But how can you be sure your insights support the Product, Marketing, Sales, and Talent strategies?

What questions must I be able to answer in relation to the company?

Four other departments rely on your Corporate Strategy. For example, Product can’t decide on new offerings without knowing how much time they can commit to them. And Sales can’t develop an outreach model without knowing how much money they can allocate for it.

In order to be sure you’re doing your part in the six-step process, ask your team these five questions:

1. How is the Corporate Strategy using the insights from Market Research to drive allocations of resources?
2. What direction needs to be set for the Product Strategy?
3. What direction needs to be set for the Marketing Strategy?
4. What direction needs to be set for the Sales Strategy?
5. What direction needs to be set for the Talent Strategy?

If you can answer these questions clearly, you know that you’ve accomplished not only what you need for your team, but also for the rest of the company.

You’re all feeding a common goal: making the number in 2016. Therefore, it only makes sense that each strategy can align with the others, providing for a cohesive revenue plan.

Now that you have what you need to prep your Corporate Strategy, dive into the thick of it on page 27 of our research report, which you can download right here.