Two Questions for Strategic Planning

In preliminary conversations about long-range strategic planning with direct marketing CEOs, Don Libey, president of consultancy Libey Inc., asks the following two questions.

What’s your exit strategy? “Until the objective of the end is known, we cannot create a strategy to get there,” writes Libey in the new book “Libey and Pickering on RFM and Beyond” (MeritDirect Press), which he co-authored with Christopher Pickering, partner at MeritDirect.

“You operate businesses very differently depending on whether they will be sold to a competitor, sold to an investment group, given to the children, structured as an employee buy-out or liquidated for cash,” Libey writes. “For each end game, there is a different strategy for almost every interim business decision and direction.”

What’s your position? That is, how does your marketplace view your company? “Position is the vantage point from which prospects and customers determine whether they want to do business with you,” he notes.

After you’ve devised an end game and exit strategy, Libey continues, you now can determine how to get there with the greatest amount of business valuation intact. If it’s all about price or service, certain steps will become evident. “The integration of channels is determined by the position. The design of catalogs is determined by position. The product selection is determined by position,” he says, “Position is the elephant we ride to get to the Taj Mahal.”

For a copy of “Libey and Pickering on RFM and Beyond” ($59), call (914) 368-1000, or look for it on Amazon.com.