PROBLEMS WE SOLVE
Clients come to Line of Sight Group for all kinds of reasons, but it typically starts with a business challenge or strategic priority. We find that these fall into three main groups – Focus. Grow. Protect.
Do you know which customer segments see the greatest value in what you do? Can you read the changes and spot new opportunities before your competitors?
How do you allocate precious resources to growth opportunities? Are you investing in people and critical functions at the right levels?
Are you outperforming your competitors relative to key customer buying criteria? How deeply do you connect with customers to defend against low-priced competitors?
“The first step in a growth policy is not to decide where and how to grow. It is to decide what to abandon. In order to grow, a business must have a systematic policy to get rid of the outgrown, the obsolete, the unproductive..”
– Peter Drucker
FOCUS.
The essence of business strategy is doing more of the things that bring value to customers and doing less of the things that don’t. But how can you be sure what those things are? Moreover, customers perceive value relative to your competition. Who’s got the answer?
We might inform and support FOCUS-related decisions with insights around:
- How is the industry landscape changing? How can we outsmart the competition by recognizing ‘white space’ for new products and markets we can move into?
- How do we identify the most profitable customer segments, product features, and business activities?
- Where can we allocate resources to focus on the most profitable customers, product features, and business activities?
- Where do customers feel we deliver the most value? The least?
- How big is the opportunity? Can we play? Can we win?
- What product features/benefits are critical now or coming at us soon?
- How do customers perceive us versus our competition?
- What are our future opportunities given the industry structure and forces, and the ever changing/evolving needs of our customers?
GROW.
Sustainable, innovative growth comes to organizations that work hard to acquire the right set of capabilities and align them with customer needs while making it difficult for competitors and substitutes to follow and duplicate.
We might inform and support GROWTH-related strategic decisions with insights around:
- Benchmarking – how do our capabilities stack up to the competition?
- Are investing in Marketing and Sales at the right levels?
- How are competitors allocating assets? Where they are investing?
- What is the size and pace of overall investment in the industry?
- What funding sources are available? Which private equity funds are investing in our industry?
- What is the pace of development by competitors and the degree of overall industry maturity? Are we ahead or behind?
- How do we go about fulfilling customer needs – buy, build, partner?
- Where should we invest – technology, product development, human resources?
- What is our customer and prospect’s buying criteria and process?
- What assumptions are inherent in our strategic plans? What will we do if they change from what was expected? What risk factors should we be watching?
PROTECT.
Once your business is established, it’s important to keep your eye on the ball – working hard at what you do well and achieving growth by acquiring market share at the expense of competitors. Of course, they are working just as hard to do the same thing!
Meanwhile, your industry is changing. It will be different in three to five years. Customers are becoming more sophisticated, new competitors are attacking certain market segments. Technology is changing how you operate. What are the right bets and moves in order to to thrive in the future?
We might inform and support PROTECT-related strategic decisions with insight around:
- How do our products and sales process stack up to the competition, and what opportunities exist to be different or better?
- Are our service delivery or production processes as efficient as they need to be?
- How do our positioning messages compare in the market? Do customers perceive us as different?
- To maintain growth, what adjacent markets and/or product areas can we move into?
- How does our value proposition resonate with customers? How does it stack up to the competition?
- How do we outperform the competition with better products and better ways for customers to experience them?
- How are customers’ needs/problems evolving?
- What market threats exist? How real are they? How should we respond?
- What scenarios are likely? How can we plan for them?
- How well does our value proposition resonate in the market? How well does it align with our customer’s needs/problems? How is it unique and better than the competition?