Ever find yourself sitting in a company office and your eyes come across the prominent display of that company’s mission statement? A mission statement is usually one or two extraordinarily artless declarative sentences that seeks within as few words as possible to signal a company’s goals, philosophy and even its very reason for being. In many cases, the artless composition makes a mission such a boring read also stimulates wonder at its very conception and existence. It may also make you, if you are a small business owner, wonder if you need a mission statement.
The thing about mission statements is that they may not necessarily exist for the purpose of helping customers. Of course, that statement is very often a blanket that covers just about everything related to a company. Does it often seem to you that companies make just about every decision based on how it will help investors or shareowners rather than how it will help customers or even employees? You must get into that frame of mind if you are wondering if your small business needs a mission statement.
Because a mission statement is probably better crafted for the purpose of informing those with whom your company does business rather than your customers or employees. Here’s another thing about a mission statement: it can be tremendous help in defining exactly what your company is actually for in this sound-byte Twitterverse of a society. Consider the mission statement the old-school example of a tweet on Twitter that informs social media about what your company does.
A mission statement by virtue of its declarative simplicity cuts through the clutter of confusion about the purpose of your company. This may be of little help to customers who come to you looking for a specific product or service, but it can be of tremendous value to potential suppliers, wholesalers, investors, distributors, subcontractors and other business interests whom you and they may depend on for survival. By crafting a solid mission statement that succinctly encapsulates what your company does and what it seeks to accomplish, those suppliers, wholesalers, investors, distributors, subcontractors and others can quickly grasp the concept of what your business stands for. With this knowledge spelled out in bold headline before them, a mission statement can actually be of more value than you suspect.
How? By cutting through massive opportunities for wasted time and inefficiency. Which would you rather do: waste an hour explaining what you need from a distributor only to find out that the distributor cannot meet even your broadly defined purpose and goals or to let that distributor realize in a just a single sentence that there is no way they can do what you need?
Success in business at any level is highly dependent upon efficiency and cutting a clear path through confusion. A well-written, clearly focused mission statement can go a long way toward paring a confusing business plan to its basic. A mission statement can also effectively communicate in a world increasingly dependent upon smaller and smaller amounts of information the overriding philosophy that guides your plan for success.
Do you a mission statement if you are a small business owner? Probably yes. But the prominent display for customers is there for show only. If you don’t use it as an integral part of your strategy for implementing that philosophy for success on a daily basis, you are just adding to the inefficiency that a mission statement help to reduce. Moreover, if you want to scale your business and make it more credible for your customers you can opt for CRM services. There are hundreds of different CRM systems to choose from according to your budget and requirements.
