By: KHA Consulting Team
The following is part 14 of a multi-part series on The KHA Way, KHA Management Consulting’s Integrated Service Offering. This blog series includes the benefits of using KHA Management Consulting Services and the components included.
Previously, we discussed the first phase, The Long-Term Blueprint, in KHA’s three phases of corporate strategy. In this post, we will go more in depth into the second phase of corporate strategic planning, an organization’s Offering Alignment. This phase will take a look at how your firm presents itself to the market and sells its products, whatever they are.
The offering alignment is the combination of 3 strategic devices that clearly separates you from your competitors. Clearly defining your offering alignment answers three main questions:
- What do you do?
- How do you do it?
- Why should anybody trust you to do it?
The exercises we use to clearly understand the answers to those questions are what we call your 3 Core Differentiators, your Proven Process, and your organization’s One Promise. Each are equally important, and we believe in them at our core. In fact, it was through doing these exercises that we developed ‘The KHA Way’ which you are reading about now. By doing the work and going through the exercises with us, your condition will be improved.
Clearly defining, understanding, and sharing your 3 core differentiators is an important step in truly knowing who you are and why your customers come to you. You should answer the question, ‘If I am compared to my closest competitor, why would a potential customer choose me?’. Once you understand your core differentiators you will know where to apply your focus, time, and energy. Having your core differentiators clearly defined will give you the ability to relate your vision, values, and Hedgehog to your blend of products or services, therefore, allowing you to increase clarity around what strategic initiatives you should be undertaking.
Your Proven Process is the device that will communicate to your customers, even potential customers, that your organization truly has it together and is an expert in their field. We suggest coupling this Proven Process with a few customer testimonials and showcase them on your website. By completing the Proven Process activities with our management consultant team, you will have a clearly defined way of doing things and you will feel much better going into the next phases of the Strategic Planning process. You will know what you do, the only question remaining will be ‘How do we do it better and on a larger scale?’.
The final portion of your organization’s Offering Alignment is the ‘One Promise’. This is what you will guarantee to all your customers if their worst fears come true when engaging with your product or service. The key to crafting a great ‘One Promise’ is understanding your customers and clearly defining their biggest pain points, then crafting a promise that alleviates that pain. Through crafting a ‘One Promise’ you will identify what you are doing wrong as an organization, what causes your customers pain, and then make a commitment to alleviating that pain, backing it up with an executable guarantee. This will force your team to be accountable to each other and get you on the right track to enter the next and final phase of your firms strategic planning, Short-Term Tactics.
At KHA Management Consultants, we work with mid-market industry leaders to identify what makes the organization, its stakeholders, and its’ employees tick. We facilitate Process Alignment with your organization’s key constituents to ensure buy-in, ownership, and a new way of thinking about the organization and its stakeholders amongst all levels. From a resource perspective, we primarily use our unmatched experience but also tap into the top-level resources such as those made available by Harvard Business Review, relevant strategic management authors, and MentorPlus. Some of those materials, frameworks, and lessons have been used in authoring this series.
KHA Management Consultants, the consulting department of KHA Accountants, PLLC, based in Flower Mound, Texas, is always looking for opportunities to work with key clients ready to take their organization to the next level. If you have a desire to improve, take the first step toward success with the strategic management experts, and contact us at 972-221-2500.