You have now spent hours - more likely days and weeks - refining exactly what you have to offer to your customer. You have even boiled it down to a tagline that gets the message across exactly right. Think of Federal Express and its, "When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight," and M & M's, "Candies that melt in your mouth, not in your hand."

What next? You have to shape your business around it. This is where most entrepreneurial companies fail. They do not follow through. They search for the chimera of revenue in alleys far from the path they have defined for themselves. In the process they confuse their employees, their customers and their investors. They flounder and many fail.

Let me explain. Go back to our printer, the one who billed himself as a specialist in the "printing needs of accountants and attorneys." The owner of the deli next door tips him about the school that needs invitations printed for a big event. A customer, an accountant, knows of a newsletter publisher who is unhappy with his current printer.

Should our printer follow up on these "opportunities?" Is it not his obligation to bring in every dribble of business when he is not running at capacity and overhead keeps mounting? Most entrepreneurs would go for revenue wherever they think they can find it.

Mistake. Big mistake. Don't bother crafting a strategy if you don't plan to stick with it.

The reason our printer became a specialist in the "printing needs of accountants and attorneys" is to differentiate himself. When you do this successfully you can charge a premium price and it is easier to hold on to customers. When the revenue rolls in you sleep better and employee morale is higher and customers feel good coming to you. Don't blow this benefit.

What would our printer tell the school that needs invitations printed or the publisher who might switch his newsletter printing business? There is no good story, no compelling reason to give him the business. He wants the business, but that is his problem and of no concern to the school or the publisher. He is reduced to the status of a "me too" vendor and will probably be beaten down on price. Ugh!

Walk away from business that does not fit your strategy. It is not free. It is not gravy. It does cost you. It costs you in time, in effort and in the dilution of the message you want to get across to your customers and employees and investors.

Let’s be practical here. You do not turn away business that walks in the door. If the school or the publisher approaches you, you will oblige by printing the invitations or the newsletter. You will even print the menus for the restaurant next door when asked. What you will NOT do is spend any significant time or effort pursuing such "opportunities." They detract from the strategic direction you have set for yourself.

Now here is an exercise for you: one that I guarantee will be eye-opening. Are you laser-focused on the strategic direction you have set for yourself? Are more than 90 percent of your resources directed to wooing customers that you have specifically targeted? Or are you all over the map pursuing big and small customers and making ad hoc deals based on your judgment of what it will take to reel them in?

Do you even know the answer to this? Here is a quick way to find out. Get a list of prospects contacted in the last month. Who have your salespersons met? Who have your telemarketers called? Who has received your direct mail? Who was invited to your seminars and who actually showed up? Who stopped by your trade-show booth?

Are these the persons you want to have as your customers? Do they fit into the segments you have defined? My bet is that they won't fit in. That is because defining your strategy is only the first step.

You have to explain this strategy to your people. You have to convince them that it makes sense. You have to invest in making it succeed. You have to discourage activities that don't fit. This is what gives you wear-and-tear and makes you old beyond your years. But it's important. Terribly important. And you better keep your eye on the ball because no one else will.

Let's say you have software that you want to sell to system integrators who handle projects of a particular type and size. Many salespersons come back gung-ho from a trade show with end-user companies who are "interested" in your product. What do you do?

Salespersons are commission-driven and not generally capable of understanding broad strategic directions. They are likely to resent directives to abstain from calling on their "hot" prospects. This is where your managerial skills come in. You have to provide training that lets them clearly understand the direction you have charted for the company. You have to jigger the compensation system so that they have incentives to go where you want them to.

It is an ongoing process. A never-ending one. And the devil is in the details as it always is. Every single person in the company has to understand what the company does and who it does it for and why it does it better than anyone else.

Invest in employees on the lowest rungs. Don't make the mistake of thinking that you are the company. To the CEO of a prospect calling for information, the operator is your company. If he/she is discourteous, or uninformed, or unhelpful, then you have just been tarred.

Think about your own personal experience. How often have you called a company in the capacity of a customer and been frustrated by the obtuseness of the person at the other end? It is my personal theory that pharmaceutical companies in the business of selling hypertension palliatives train these workers in an effort to drum up business.

The same thing is probably happening to customers who call your company. Nip it in the bud now.
You have spent much time developing your Unique Selling Proposition. Make sure that your employees understand it and act according to it.