The ultimate goal is the customer's money.

1. What are the strategic elements in getting it?
   1. Customers give money for needs:
      • Solve their problem.
      • Make them feel good.
      • How will their needs change?
      • What can/would make them change?
      • Is it new technology?; or a change in an energy source?
   2. Do customers have money to spend, and can they spend it?
      • A company is tied to customers' fortunes.
      • A producer is tied to their customers' resouce acquisition system or channel.
   3. A better use of the customers' money isn't present.
2. Which customer is best?
   1. Those with the most money
   2. Those with less variable needs
   3. Those with more urgent needs
   4. Needs require replenishing
   5. Those with more long-term needs
   6. Those who survive longer
   7. Those less-than-optimal customers nobody else wants to pursue.
3. Strategy asks "Which customers (money) should we go after?"
4. Marketing then answers the question: "How can we maximize it?"

Some purported strategy books really are "creative thinking" cookbooks. They do not necessarily ask what the basic mission or goal is-- "What should the goal be? (usually survival); and by what means can we best attain it?" Creative thinking is useful, but it is not the same as strategy.

This free download page is from Gustafson's Training and Development web site. (C) 1999 W. N. Gustafson. Permission is granted to print or save for personal purposes.