“A mission statement can be a useful guide when planning the start-up, growth or expansion of your business.” real value comes from going through the process itself. Sure, you end up with a work product document, but if done correctly, the journey itself can be invaluable. You may be tempted to re- search other companies’ mission statements and just wing it or have your advertising agency create something for you. While these approaches can play a legitimate role, you need to start at the beginning if you want to get the most out of this exercise. “OK, I’ll take the bait! Where is the beginning?” One of the best approaches is to write down questions that someone might ask about your business. Then, develop succinct answers to those questions. This is a good time to inject a word of caution regarding ver- biage. In the beginning, forget the polished-sounding eloquent words and phrases. Oh, and nobody really cares about your spelling or sentence structure either, because you can clean all of that up later. Craſt and save your answers — ideally, electroni- cally. Be prepared to develop lots of iterations. You may find it helpful to employ the “concentric circles” method where you start with broad narrative and then systematically refine your verbiage until it’s both succinct and informative. Another way is to develop bullet point responses to each of the questions. A combination is fine also; whatever works for you. Questions to Be Asked and Answered Before we jump into the deep end of the pool, let’s think about how you might describe a person if required to do so by the police or for some other reason. Your description might in- clude such attributes as height, weight, race, facial hair, build, hair (style, color, length…or lack thereof), eye color, clothing, etc. You could do the same thing for a house, office building or car. Or you could just go directly to describing your busi- ness. Following are some attributes and characteristics (not necessarily in order) that might help describe a business. Functional areas of activity Geographical scope of service area Factory, warehouse/branch or retail locations WWW.ALOA.ORG Markets and/or customer segments served Sales force and methods Distribution channels Communications and marketing methods Management and employees Technology employed (the latest techniques or products) Patents and licenses Awards or special capabilities, qualifications or certifications Years in business? Family owned? Better Business rating? Customer satisfaction levels (possibly customer reviews and ratings) Measures of performance With these types of attributes in mind, let’s develop a few questions that will elicit information about your business and the type of details you want to provide in your answers. Some of the following examples and verbiage might not apply to your locksmith business, but considering them can put you on the right track and better understand the concepts. What are the primary functional areas of your business? XYZ company (usually one or more of the following): sells, invents, installs, repairs, services, manufacturers, distributes, provides. What are the products and/or services provided? For a service business, this might be something like: XYZ company sells, installs and services _____ products and systems. What is the company’s geographic scope? XYZ offers and provides its ______ (services) (internationally, nationally, regionally, locally, state-wide or county-wide) within the _______ area. Does the company have any factory, warehouse/distribution center, retail or branch locations? This answer will rely heavily upon the company’s distribution channels and infrastructure. Which markets or segments does the company serve? It’s oſten best to begin by thinking of the ultimate consumer or end user. XYZ provides _______ to _____ (usually one or more of) (commercial, residential, government, automotive, consumers, etc.) on a high level. Then, this needs to be drilled down to more specific segments. Is it homeowners, car owners, institutions, _______, etc.? JUNE 2021 KEYNOTES 17 Service and/or delivery vehicles and equipment or other hard assets
