Many leaders have guided their organizations in new directions in response to marketplace shifts over the past few years. In some cases, innovating their offering mix to take advantage of emerging opportunities, find a path through unexpected challenges and (most importantly) determine what has the potential to scale.
These leaders refused to let all the disruption be for naught and, as a result, their organization's purpose, strategic assets and offerings look very different today.
They were open to making changes in the face of great uncertainty, even to their organization's core offering — no matter how well it had performed in the past.
You also need to pause and consider if your organization's offering mix is clearly defined, prepared to compete and, if significant growth is a top priority, positioned to scale.
Here's why to make re-examining your offering mix a top priority:
Sales Success. How clearly defined your offering mix is directly correlates to sales success. Not only is it really hard to sell an offering that isn’t clear, but deeper clarity enables you to refine your target market and audience, as well as the best channels and messaging for reaching them. If you're a nonprofit or foundation, don't let the word "sales" throw you – it's a catch-all for multiple types of growth-related end goals.
Differentiation. Another reason to get more clear on your offering mix is to better differentiate it in the marketplace. Why? Differentiation is key to revenue growth. Most organizations have competitors or others in the market that provide similar offerings. You may know your organization's offerings are better, but if you haven’t clearly defined them articulating differences will be near impossible.
Focus. The most underrated advantage of clearly defining your offering mix is that doing so also defines what your organization does and doesn't do. Organizations lose money and momentum when they try to serve customers who aren’t a good fit with their offerings. When this happens, no one is happy. Your team feels unsuccessful and your target audiences feel misunderstood. Defining your offering will bring focus to your organization's efforts and result in a more engaged team and deeply loyal customers.
How do you assess and define your organization's offering mix?
Use a product/service matrix to help you understand your offering mix better and employ any evaluation criteria you prefer.
For example, you may want to understand what offerings are most popular or more profitable, where there are gaps or overlaps in your offerings and what specific problems each solve. Next, compare your offerings to your competitors' to further ascertain weak spots, advantages and differences. You may even want to seek out customer feedback and reshape your offerings subtly or dramatically to prepare and position your organization to compete more effectively.
Bottom line: All leaders need to manage and invest in an offering mix that will deliver the biggest return and impact. Getting crystal clear is the only way you'll be able to do this with any type of accuracy at all.
