When the Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Strategic - Eric Keiles
Eric Keiles is an entrepreneur, speaker, and writer. He has spoken and participated in panel throughout America’s entrepreneurial community and acts as a guest lecturer at several Philadelphia-area business schools; he’s a highly intelligent guy with a lot of information to share. In his Paper Napkin Wisdom, Eric tells us to think Strategy before Tactics.
Strategy is important
It sounds so simple, but it isn’t really. As entrepreneurs we often just want to fix the problem in front of us and move on to the next thing, but that’s not where growth comes from. As Eric explains, approaching things that way is fine if you want to keep doing what you’ve always done but it won’t grow your company. Eric grew his companies to become multi-million dollar inbound marketing firms in one of the toughest economies in memory. During that journey, he learned that strategy should always come first.
"When you spend some time on strategy, you lay groundwork for frame your tactics around." You can jump right into the tactics, admits Eric, but it won’t be nearly as effective. Jumping into tactics is having one element and no real direction in how to use it, but when you spend some time on strategy, you lay groundwork to frame your tactics around. Eric explains that by starting with strategy we make everything else much easier. There are four strategic questions Eric believes you should ask yourself: 1) Who is your perfect client? 2) What are their pains and problems? 3) What can you do to make those pains go away? 4) How can you make those pains go away in a remarkable fashion? If you can answer those four questions, you’re able to lay the groundwork for a really good marketing messaging story. Eric goes out of his way to deliberately make sure his team spends concentrated time together on strategy on regular basis. The payoff of that effort has been the exponential growth of his company through acquisition, in fact, he’s about to add another asset to what has become an international firm. Eric is a real pro at what he does and truly practices what he preaches… it’s worked well for him. What could it do for you? Listen to my conversation with Eric here:
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