Dansk
Experience shows that a sales process runs more smoothly when a company has a well-defined strategy. The direction is clear, as are the conditions for success. Strategy expert Sanne Markwall has digitized the otherwise complex strategy process. "Super positive experience and a powerful tool," says M+A Virksomhedsbørsen.
Companies with a well-developed and understandable strategy clearly achieve better results than those without. Both experience and empirical evidence show this.
Strategy processes are feared by many business leaders because they are often "long-winded", expensive, complicated and don't really lead to anything because the end product is a vague document without concrete instructions on what the company needs to do to achieve its goals.
The value of a good strategy is rarely questioned because companies with a strategy achieve better results than those without a formalized battle plan. Yet, due to the complexity, many try to avoid strategy work.
There's no need for that anymore. Danish strategy expert Sanne Markwall has now developed and launched an affordable digital tool that pedagogically guides the company through a structured questioning process and allows all relevant people to participate in the process. The end product is a clear and easy-to-understand action plan, which the company can easily correct if (when) some of the prerequisites change.
The process is so intuitive and simple that companies can do it themselves, but many still choose to let a strategy expert facilitate the process. Whether you do it yourself or use a consultant, the process is far simpler and more flexible than the classic consultant-based strategy processes used to date.
"A strong strategic foundation supports and strengthens the company in its development and growth. It's important to always have a good overview of all the factors that influence operations and development. The overview facilitates the entire approach to and process of developing the strategy as well as the implementation and practical execution of the same. And this ultimately affects the sale price of a company," explains Frank Jensen, Virksomhedsbørsen.
An effective tool that ties the ends together
"On a daily basis, we work as business brokers with a large number of companies that are in the process of planning and describing plans for the company's development and future operational basis.
This is often part of the preparation to get the company ready to sell. And we often hear - when companies need to involve several advisors with different expertise and competencies - that it's a lot of work when their contributions and input need to be built into the company's overall strategic plans," says Frank Jensen.
"We find MakeMyStrategy™ easily accessible and flexible. You are guided through the strategy process, which is automatically summarized in an easy-to-understand document. You can share with the entire company and other stakeholders and work effectively with the strategy in everyday life."
says Frank Jensen, M+A Virksomhedsbørsen A/S.
The solution was developed by strategy expert Sanne Markwall, who has integrated a number of different classic strategy methods into a powerful tool that guides the company pedagogically through all the questions you need to ask yourself in a qualified strategy process.
An efficient process - with or without consultants.
We asked Sanne Markwall to describe the importance and value of working professionally and purposefully with the strategy foundation and explain a little about the background of the digital platform MakeMyStrategy™.
"The Center for Owner-Managed Businesses has conducted a study that shows that companies that focus on strategy have on average two times higher profits and three times higher growth than companies that do not focus on strategy. The numbers speak for themselves. In other words, your company becomes far more valuable when you work with a sharp and targeted strategy," summarizes Sanne Markwall.
"I've worked with strategy processes for many years and realized that the work was often too complicated and time-consuming to lead to concrete results. I decided to do something about it. I wanted to digitize the process, guide companies efficiently through a question and work process to end up with a simple and understandable tool - or battle plan - with the focus points that the companies themselves found important."
says Sanne Markwall
Both small and large companies can benefit from the tool, which also contains a number of educational tools in the form of templates, videos, etc. that make it easy to communicate the strategy.
"I still meet a surprising number of companies that think strategy is a waste of time. But you need to know, not guess, what your priorities should be. And you need to know in which direction to go and that requires you to be data-driven and not (only) based on intuition.
This is especially important at a time when business models can become obsolete in a morning and new opportunities are emerging at record pace. The ability to move in a timely manner has become crucial for the vast majority of businesses.
Where do you come from? Where are you going? How do you get there? The tool addresses all this by asking questions and relating the answers to each other.
Emotions also play a big role in a sales situation and must be respected and taken seriously. Classic strategy books don't offer much help here. MakeMyStrategy™ does, however. Emotions must be brought out into the open. They only become dangerous if they remain untold. And they are often more important than you might think. In other words, there is room for both emotions and hardcore business - if you build on strategic clarity," says Sanne Markwall.
Strategic tool with proven impact and effectiveness.
Creating a strategy is often based on vast amounts of material and information, with formatting and versioning taking focus away from content. A classic, manual strategy plan risks losing relevance quickly because it's not up to date.
Say goodbye to the dusty strategy plan, the many books, the use of analog templates, unused data, fragmented and confusing knowledge, and heavy and complex strategy processes that start from scratch every time.
In MakeMyStrategy™, the company can adapt its strategy in moments. All material of importance exists digitally and in one place, online, and can easily be adjusted if (when) the situation requires it.
"In MakeMyStrategy™, you easily make the relevant corrections and then see where the corrections can have consequences. This gives you the opportunity to rethink the strategy. Once you've made impact corrections, you can generate an updated strategy plan with updated output with just one click," concludes Sanne Markwall.
How to make strategy work efficient and simple in 2022.
This article is published by M+A Virksomhedsbørsen A/S in connection with M+A Masterclass - an event for owner-managers.