This document provides guidance on developing a long-term strategic vision and plan for a business. It recommends bringing together a cross-functional team to identify strategic initiatives by analyzing various business metrics and feedback. The team then selects the top initiatives to form the basis of a 3-5 year plan. Milestones and budgets are set for each initiative. Key performance indicators are established and reviewed monthly to monitor progress and make adjustments if needed. Regular communication is important to deploy the new vision and initiatives throughout the organization. Periodic reviews assess whether initiatives require problem-solving or ways to sustain successes.

1. Part II – “Getting the Long Game
Right” is the second part to “The
Quick Recovery Guide to B2B
Marketing” turnaround
framework article.
By Halden Zimmermann
Now that you have really focused
resources on the short-term plan,
driving demand generation to a
targeted space, you need to build a
strategy with your team that is broader,
inclusive and leverages your full
resources efficiently. There is a tool set
for this (“Strategy One Pager”) that will
be attached to the end, graphically
showing the details of each step.
The first time I went through this
process, it was tough and bumpy. My
advice is to avoid the big mistakes of not
being inclusive and of going too fast.
Vision and Commercial Strategic
Initiatives: This step is the most
important alignment step; many ask me
how to do this well and what tools to
use. First, bring together a cross-
functional working team of no more
than 8 people of various functions within
the organization, and at every level.
They should bring expertise on your
business, markets, finances, etc. Be sure
it is a good mix. Define the team and the
goals along with your workshop process.
Assign to each team member what I call
“LENSES” or “VOICES”. Each team
member is
asked to
slice and
dice every
metric,
snapshot,
feedback
and performance number or “VOICE” for
their assigned section. The five lenses I
like to assign are Voice of the Customer,
Employee, Competitor, Business and
Process.
BUILDING & DEPLOYING YOUR BUSINESS VISION AND STRATEGY
GETTING THE LONG GAME RIGHT
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2. The leader for each section puts their
data on PowerPoint. During the
workshop, the team views each and
writes down the opportunity that they
feel will drive impact with the
corresponding slide. This will take you
the better part of a day and 300 sticky
notes plastering the wall. Next, organize
the sticky notes into groups of similar
themes…it is surprising how nicely they
will fall into related segments. You will
have 4-7 groupings of subjects
indicating the largest opportunities in
the commercial area of the business.
Have the team evaluate and pick the top
3-4 groups. Now you are ready to define
your vision. From the themes of the 3-4
groups of strategic initiatives, there will
be ideas you want to tie into your vision.
With your core team, create a vision
statement based on what the future will
look like after implementing the
strategic initiatives. Then you will have a
corporate vision that is backed up by a
strategic initiative pipeline.
3-5 year Plan: Out of your core
workshop team the next step is to build
an operating agenda for each of the
strategic initiatives. This agenda
includes the high level milestones and
activity that needs to be done in order to
execute the strategic initiative. Each
milestone should have an estimated
dollar amount assigned to it. The overall
operating agenda should sum up into
total impact for the business. Now
prioritize which strategic initiatives are
first, second and so on...or you may
decide to have two strategic initiatives
at the same time, but no more. The next
tool is a waterfall showing the financial
progression of where you are now plus
all the growth levers in your business,
and now includes your strategic
initiatives. This waterfall should cover
three years of topline performance,
market growth, pricing, acquisitions and
your strategic initiatives.
Deployment: Deploying your new
vision, and the strategic initiatives
associated with that vision, is one of the
most important thing a leader can do.
Having town halls and state of the union
meetings communicating what the
current state is, the new vision and how
you want to get to future state at every
level is vitally important. Your staff must
also be communicating the vision and it
must be a consistent message. On the
other side of the equation there needs
to be Strategic Initiative leaders and
initiative teams that are created so the
business can start to implement the
operating agenda that you all chose to
focus on. There is a tool called the X-
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3. Matrix that helps align teams and the
organization around the goal, and who
is responsible for which KPIs. In
deploying these initiatives the team
leader uses the Operating Agenda to
facilitate and create an action plan to
achieve the agenda and KPIs to measure
the initiatives impact over time.
KPIs Should Be:
 Proactive
 Measureable
 Actionable
 Strategic
Now on a monthly basis, the working
team is reviewing the KPI chart, the
Action Item register and dynamically
holding teams accountable, or adjusting
the plan if it is not working. A great tool
to reviewing KPIs is something called a
bowling chart. This chart is extremely
useful in understanding very quickly
where the problem areas are and what
the trends and comparisons reveal.
Follow-up and Diagnostic: A good
strategic team is always reviewing and
assessing the progress of the Strategic
Initiatives…and the leadership team
should also be reviewing them every
month. When there is a diversion or a
problem, the project team needs to
convene and figure out what is amiss
and how to fix it. This is done through a
systematic process of problem solving
called root cause countermeasure. The
team must analyze the KPI results and
evaluate why/where the performance is
lacking, what the root cause is and how
to countermeasure the miss.
If things are going well, the team needs
to be talking about how to sustain this
successful process and approach. This
may take investment, training or new
tools. You want to make sure the hard
work of the team continues by
integrating the improved process into
business practices going forward. This is
called standardizing the wins.
That sums it up…you have an approach
to getting your commercial team and
marketing teams aligned on a long-term
vision and plan to hit your 3-5 year goals.
This is an inclusive process and needs to
be supported by all levels of the
organization. If followed properly, it is
very powerful…take it from me, there
will be bumps. To this day when I
implement this approach, I still learn
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4. something new, and it NEVER goes
exactly to plan. I guarantee that will
happen to you, and THAT is why they
pay you the BIG BUCKS!
Halden Zimmermann is a Transformational
Marketing and Business Leader, positioning
companies to out-compete, out-innovate and
outperform the market. He brings real world
marketing expertise with significant P&L
experience helping the organizations he leads to
leverage simple but game changing marketing
tools aimed at accelerating growth.
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