Defensive warfare applies to market leaders

Offensive warfare is suitable for companies in the second and third positions

Flanking warfare is suitable for smaller companies

Guerrilla warfare applies to local or regional businesses

Human activities to satisfy people's needs and wants through the process of exchange

Marketing is the business practice of guiding the flow of goods or services from producers to consumers

Activities in which an organization seeks to achieve its goals by anticipating customer or customer needs and directing the flow of goods and services that satisfy the needs from producers to customers or customers.

Nowadays every company is customer-oriented, such as dozens of companies are trying to meet the requirements of the same set of customers. Then, just understanding the needs of customers is of little use.

In military warfare, two or more armies fight for first control.

In a business war, two or more companies fight for consumers. Unlike military wars, business wars never end.

The essential characteristic of business today is the struggle between companies rather than meeting people's wants and needs.

Mathematical laws at war

Mathematical rules in business war

The “Great Employee” Fallacy

The “better product” fallacy

If you are so smart, why aren't you rich?

Military commanders do not challenge forces several times their own. Roughly speaking, if the attack wants to be successful, it should invest at least three times more troops than the enemy at the attack location.

In the wilderness, the two armies exchanged fire, and victory or defeat was quickly determined. The side with more troops will always have the advantage.

But when one side is on the defensive, the laws of numbers change.

Assume that the red team commander has nine soldiers and is fighting against the blue team. The blue team commander has only six soldiers. At this time, the red team has a 50% strength advantage. But this time the blue team is on the defensive, defending in trenches or foxholes.

For the blue team members and soldiers, the situation is still the same. Every 3 bullets fired can hit a red team soldier; the blue team is in a safe defensive position, and it takes 9 bullets from the red team to hit a blue team soldier.

Red team, this situation is the same as the difficulty of "persuasive" selling, that is, it is much harder to take away business from a competitor with a solid market position than from a customer who is not loyal to any manufacturer.

After the first firefight: The red team has more troops than the blue team, but the ratio is only 7:5;

After the second exchange of fire: the score dropped to 5:4;

After the third exchange of fire: the two sides were evenly matched in strength, 4:4.

The red team had better cancel the attack under such circumstances, otherwise the whole army will be annihilated.

The biggest mistake business people make is failing to face up to the powerful power of an opponent who is on the defensive. (ignorance and arrogance)

General Patton said: "Now I want you to remember that no one can win a war simply by dying for his country. If you want to win a war, you must make the enemy sacrifice more than his country."

Losers will tell you that love cannot soothe the pain of losers, which is difficult for winners to realize.

In the offensive war of business, the most difficult thing is the transmission of information. It takes months, even years, to get product information to millions of consumers. In this way, the defender has enough time to hinder and disrupt the attacker's sales message in different forms.

To make better use of the time factor, defenders must be alert to potential dangers from all sides.

A military commander with normal thinking would never set a timetable for victory.

Business promises should be as ambiguous as political language, otherwise they will weaken your power.

If you just want to win through hard work, you will usually end up in failure. One-heartedness is the key word here.

In contrast, a better strategy would be to exploit opportunity rather than brute force.

Whenever you hear your boss say, "We need to work harder," you know you're hearing failure.

Stop asking employees to make unnecessary efforts and make worthless contributions. This is not something a general should ask his army to do.

You should explore where other companies occupy the customer's mind and find out which company occupies the commanding heights in the customer's mind.

Drawing a mental map gives you a huge advantage; most of your competitors don't even know where the battlefield is.

They are completely tied to their own camp, their product, our sales force, and their own sales plan.

In military battles, hills are usually considered to be favorable terrain for combat, especially for defense. In business wars, managers call a powerful position the "commanding heights." Therefore, it seems more appropriate to use Shantou as a main concept in business wars.

Market segmentation breaks down positions

Let us take another look at the battlefield in our hearts. Of course, the hilltop is the commanding height of the leader's strategy.

If you want to climb the mountain, that means you have to fight an offensive battle. You're hopeful that you might find a breakthrough, but the fighting is brutal and the price will be high because the leader on the top of the mountain usually already has enough resources to launch a powerful counterattack.

If you are rushing down the mountain to stop the attack, then you are fighting a defensive battle, and the rule is: the best defense is an effective attack.

If you are detouring through mountains, or you are fighting a flanking battle, this kind of warfare is usually most effective and least expensive. But in many product categories, opportunities for launching excellent flanking campaigns are becoming increasingly rare.

If you hang around at the bottom of the mountain, you are fighting a guerrilla war, looking for a safe market that can be defended, or a small market that the leader is too lazy to enter.

The first principle of defensive warfare: Only market leaders can fight defensive battles.

The second principle of defensive warfare: The best defense is to have the courage to attack yourself.

The third principle of defensive warfare: The powerful attack continues to be blocked.

In war, it is best to forget about the so-called principles of peaceful coexistence.

If a war begins, make sure you are the victor.

The time when the war starts is uncertain, and the attacking party may not be you.

Another effective strategy for leaders is to leave a reserve fund for themselves.

The attacker should attack with all his strength, but it is not cost-effective for the leader to spend as much money as possible on one campaign. It is better to invest only what is needed to suppress the opponent.

Clausewitz once said: "The number of vocal reserve armies is the focus of attention of the commanders on both sides."

Defenders should take into account a certain amount of legal fees as a normal expense of doing business.

The ultimate goal of all defensive warfare is to win peace and force competitors to engage in scattered guerrilla warfare.

Assuming that leaders have recently made permanent peace, they can change their strategy and focus on the product itself rather than their brand.

If you have a piece of pie, you should make the whole pie bigger, not just the small piece in your hand.

The first principle of offensive warfare: The strength of the leader's position is an important consideration.

The second principle of offensive warfare: Find the weakness in the leader's strength and attack that weakness.

The third principle of offensive warfare: Attack on the narrowest possible front.

The first principle of flanking warfare: This operation should ideally be conducted in an uncontested zone.

The second principle of flanking warfare: Tactical surprise should be an important part of the plan.

The third principle of flanking warfare: Pursuit is as important as attack.

Low-priced flanking battle

High-priced flanking battle

Channel flanking war

Small product flanking war

Big product flanking war

FeaturesFlanking

Flanking is not for the faint of heart or the timid, it is a gamble that may lead to great success or total failure.

Business managers who like to do market research often find that it is very difficult to launch flanking wars. They always use surveys instead of foresight.

If you want to have a grasp of the industry situation, one way is to read industry publications. Leaders are very open about their vision for the future. If they openly oppose the development of a product, you can have extra time. They have to overcome their own arrogance before they follow your lead, and that takes time.

The preparation time for production is an important factor that needs to be considered on both the defensive side and the flanking side. Hitting the time difference is a key factor in controlling the rhythm.

The first principle of guerrilla warfare: Find a market segment that is small enough to defend

The second principle of guerrilla warfare: No matter how successful you are, never act like a leader.

The third principle of guerrilla warfare: At the first sign of failure, be ready to retreat.

geographical guerrilla warfare

Population guerrilla warfare

Industry guerrilla warfare

product guerrilla warfare

High-end guerrilla warfare

development alliance

The general principle is

Business managers should spend more time studying business history. Most business history has focused on results rather than causes. We should look through the results to find the causes. And knowing that this is a complex system, you The reasons found may not be enough to determine the outcome of the entire battle. But you still have to find them.

Tactically speaking, the language, graphics and music can be changed as often as needed, but the strategy must not be changed.

Cognition can affect people's judgment and taste. The mind is the battlefield. There are no facts in the mind, only cognition, and cognition is the fact.

Many people believe that half the effort can lead to twice the result. Although it is easier to cross a small step than a big step, when crossing a big ditch, no one would want to cross one half first and then the other half. ——Clausewitz.

When it comes to increasing advertising budgets, top management always makes the mistake of asking, what is the return on the investment? Instead, they should ask how much we should invest to ensure victory.

The boundary between victory and defeat in war sometimes lies in the slight difference between victory on the battlefield and the losing side's casualties, prisoners of war and artillery losses.

At the right moment, the power used against the right enemy will produce greater power.

Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

There is an art to leadership - leaders say to employees: "Without you, we can accomplish nothing."; Strategy - Strategists must understand in their hearts, "We can do without you."

Products are just tools to carry strategy. You can't think about problems from a better perspective, you can only think from differences.

product line mix

In war, the most serious mistakes are made out of kindness. ——Clausewitz

When dealing with competitors, don't give them a chance to breathe. You must know that letting the tiger go back to the mountain will cause troubles in the future.

The commander must exert all his efforts in the first battle to win the final victory.

For a good business strategy, what he should focus on is to establish his dominant position as early as possible in the battle. Just like playing chess, winning a group at the beginning can often guarantee the final victory.

If you want to win, you can only completely overturn the leader's strategy, either find the weakness in the leader's strength, or carry out flanking, or engage in guerrilla warfare, or concentrate your own forces.

If you do not occupy the commanding heights in the minds of customers, it is not enough to have a good product. Victory usually belongs to the party that controls the mental position of the customers.

Decentralized management erodes the risk-taking spirit of business people. Managers are not fools. They know that as long as they can stay above the "dismissal line", they can successfully ascend to the top management of the company.

"Fire Line" Test

When a person is above the "dismissal line", the individual does not have any sales goals. If the sales are successful, he can naturally receive the glory of victory; if the sales fail, he can blame others. This position may be redundant at this time.

Decentralized management means that the dismissal line is getting lower and lower, and the company is divided into many territories. Each territory does not have enough power to launch large-scale business war operations on its own. As a result, many companies' commercial warfare activities are reduced to many small-scale battles, you might call it, "Trench warfare" in business.

Ability to adapt strategy to form, rather than form to strategy.

Much of the intelligence obtained during the war was contradictory, much more was erroneous, and much of it was questionable.

In the fog of war, it is easy to resort to strategies that have been successful before. In fact, when it comes to strategic decision-making, you should sit down and think about all elements of strategy and tactics.

For a general, stubbornness and inflexibility are weaknesses, not strengths. Strip away their pretense of determination and courage.

A good general should not have stubborn prejudices. He should carefully consider all options and listen to various opinions before making a decision.

It is this flexibility of the mind that can cause the enemy to panic. They cannot know when and where the other party will attack, making it difficult to guard against them.

The distinguishing quality of a good general is the type of courage he possesses. Excellent ones will have unlimited courage to face the different opinions put forward by bosses and colleagues. Although good business leaders are open-minded and able to listen to various opinions, when it comes to making decisions, Their minds will close in time and they will find the firm belief and courage deep within to make decisions. ——This is decisiveness

Mediocre generals are all "tough" type: "No one can tell me what to do?" (Deng Binbin, it seems that you have been like this in recent years. You must always remember to reflect on the situation, and don't let it happen because of you. Long-term exclusion or neglect has caused you to Lose the inertia of being a wise person. You can be grumpy, all I ask of you is that you make thoughtful choices before you grump. )

"Strong" people can become excellent leaders, and leaders do not have to be excellent generals or strategists. (I am not a leader, I want to be a strategist-type business general.)

If you're good at acting, you can be both a competent leader and a good strategist. Patton often practiced his "war expression" in front of the mirror. (In the Hongbo incident, you told yourself not to perform, so will you perform?)

Many consultants overemphasize the "morale" factor, believing that morale alone can win a business war. They did it, and the opposite is true. Only victory in the war can boost the morale of the troops.

Clausewitz said: "The higher the military rank, the less courageous you are." In other words, the closer you are to retirement, the less courageous you are; the more stock options you have, the less courageous you are.

Many business generals have inherent flaws: when they are in trouble, they show too much courage; when they are in adversity, they are too cautious. (How to define this? Can knowing the facts solve this flaw?)

Every business question has a simple and obvious answer, but that answer is usually wrong.

Excellent business generals, when formulating strategies, start from the basics and start with the details. Once a strategy is developed, it's a simple, but not necessarily "obvious" answer.

Luck plays an important role in business wars. The strategy has been decided, the attack has begun, and you have to be ready to wait for luck to come. Of course, if you do things right, your chances of winning are better.

Clausewitz said: "No other human activity is so permanently and universally associated with chance. War is most similar to playing cards."

Conditional surrender is not a shame. A good general will never fight until only one person is left; a good chess player will never play a chess game that has already been decided.

Because it is meaningless to waste resources in vain, it is best to admit failure and withdraw and invest in another shopping mall station.

There are more battles to fight on the business battlefield, and more victories waiting for you to fight for.

To play a game, you first have to learn the rules or principles of the game, and then you have to try to unlearn those rules. That is, you have to learn to play without thinking about the rules.

A good general should not deliberately ask, "What type of war are we fighting? What principles should we use?" When the battle starts, you don't have time to flip through the book. If These cognitions are all in other people’s heads, so what use do you have? So you need to practice the "rules" deliberately.

To correct this problem, you must start to systematically study the history of business competition, and then propose strategic principles that affect business success or failure. Nothing is more important today than strategy.

Strategy and timing are the high points of business competition; all other aspects are minutiae.

Regardless of the strategy model, strategy should be developed from the bottom up rather than planned from the top down.

Strategy should be derived from practical tactics, and marketing tactics should lead to corporate strategy.

Tactics is how you enter the mind, and it is a mental entry point for competitive differences.

The primary characteristic of a tactic is differentiation, which can be smaller, larger, lighter, heavier, cheaper, more expensive, or simply different Distribution system, and this difference is for the entire market, not just the difference between the products or services of one or two competitors.

Once you find a recording angle and direction, you can directly turn this tactic into a strategy and truly penetrate the brand into the minds of customers.

Strategy is not a goal. Top-down corporate thinking is goal-oriented. We first decide the results we want to achieve, and then discuss the plans and means to achieve the goals.

Strategy is not a goal, it is a consistent business policy for the enterprise.

Strategic consistency means always being directed towards the chosen tactics. All resources and operational activities across the enterprise, including product, pricing, distribution, advertising, and everything else leading up to the initial tactics.

If tactics are thought of as nails aimed at the mind, then strategy is a hammer wielding potential energy.

As a one-time business policy, strategy should not be changed once it is set. The purpose of strategy is to allocate corporate resources to promote the realization of tactical advantages, and to maximize the utilization and publicity of tactical advantages.

Strategy is not limited to specific goals. When tactics achieve tactical advantage, they turn into strategic advantage. We say that the corporate strategy is successfully implemented.

It can be seen that strategy comes from tactics. No matter what strategic model a company chooses, strategic planning always starts with looking for tactics.

A tactic is a concept or a perspective/strategy that has many elements that are integrated around the tactic.

Tactics are highly differentiated/strategic and can only be ordinary.

Tactical is more of a time category than static/strategic with a concept of time. For most retailers in the United States, discounting is a tactic for occasional sales. For discount stores with low prices every day, implementing discount sales is a strategy.

Tactics are competitive advantage/Strategy is the plan achieved to maintain competitive advantage.

Tactics are independent of products, services and enterprises, and may even have nothing to do with the products manufactured by the enterprise. Strategy belongs to the internal scope of the enterprise, including multi-faceted reorganization.

Tactics are communication-oriented, and getting customers to accept the concept/strategy is product-service-oriented, or enterprise-oriented.

The principle of bottom-up strategy is simple. Enterprises choose a suitable strategic model, define their main competitors, and find unique tactics for competition. Then formulate a strategic plan. The business's job is to push specific tactics into general execution and extend short-term execution into long-term implementation, so that the strategic model is realized.

What needs to be reminded is that tactics are what you are better at than your competitors. In World War II, General Aton fought a single tank battle. This was his tactic. Southwest's "single class" strategy led to its unprecedented success of low-cost, short-haul flying.

Tactics drive strategy, and strategy is played out.

Just as form should follow content, strategy should follow tactics.

The achievement of tactical results is the ultimate goal and only purpose of strategy.

If a given strategy cannot serve the tactical results, no matter how clever the idea is and how touching the expression is, the strategy is wrong.

Strategy should be developed from the bottom up, not the top down. (It is worth noting here that it does not mean that you should go to the bottom employees to ask about strategies from the bottom up, but that you should start from the bottom up. Go up layer by layer and feel it clearly. )

Business strategy should be developed from the mud of the front line of the market, not from the imagination in the ivory tower.

The main strategic goal in military operations, to put it bluntly, is that at any time and at any place, we must have two soldiers who are ready, willing, and more capable to fight. A soldier against the enemy. In other words, assisting in the application of force principles at the tactical level.

A grand strategy may make people awe-inspiring, full of inspiration, courageous and fearless, but if it cannot put its troops into battle at the right time and in the right place, If the corresponding tactical tasks are completed, then this strategy will eventually fail.

The criteria for judging works of art are often their originality, creativity and uniqueness of ideas. Strategy is different. Strategy can only be achieved when it comes into contact with customers and competitors. Only then can their effectiveness be judged.

All great military strategists have similar experiences. Their strategic thinking is based on previous tactical learning, that is, strategy obeys tactics.

advertise

public relations

Strategy is developed from a detailed understanding of tactics, but paradoxically, good strategy often does not rely on the best tactics to be realized.

The essence of a sound strategy is the ability to win in business wars without relying on superior tactics.

A company will fail if it does either of the following

Commercial generals who rely on superior tactics to win are often quick to accuse weapons of ineffectiveness, and on today's battlefield, those weapons are advertisements.

If a strategy is reasonably formulated from a tactical perspective, then this strategy should guide the tactics after the battle begins.

Sometimes it is necessary to invest significant resources in order to capture key points that affect the development of the overall strategy. For example, you may have to continue operating some loss-making projects for a period of time in order to achieve certain tactical goals. This in turn ensures the success of the overall strategy.

Vice versa, for example, when some profitable products are inconsistent with your strategy, you will have to reduce or abandon these products.

This may trigger some pushback from employees focused on sales performance, whereas Clausewitz always emphasized consistency of strategy.

Excessive delegation can also lead to strategic disunity, and decentralized management is the most common reason for lack of strategic guidance in tactics. Just like the seesaw principle, decentralized management has certain results in the short term. In the long run, the company will definitely Pay a heavy price for this.

According to the laws of physics: any action has an equal and opposite reaction. When many commercial war commanders formulate combat plans, they assume that the enemy will not react at all. In fact, this is not the case.

If you cut your price in half, your competitors will probably do the same. If you take every action, even if your opponent doesn't copy your original action at all, they will act accordingly.

Never think unilaterally. A good business strategist will anticipate the opponent's counterattack. Many principles of business warfare take into account the danger of counterattack.

Analyze the possibility of a major counterattack by looking at changes in expected market share. For example, some people boldly predict that they will steal the market share of the leader, but they forget to consider what will happen in the process. Fight to the death, forgetting to consider that the injured eagle will fight to the death.

Consider enemy counterattacks. Your opponent will spend more money and sacrifices than you to defend what they already have.

action is strategy

"As long as the company has the confidence to win, then anything is possible." It is this wrong concept that brings trouble to many successful large companies. They usually first determine a goal they hope to achieve, and then A team is then deployed to develop a strategy to achieve this goal. In reality no company is powerful enough to behave this way. As a result, impossible goals always arise.

Good business strategists live in a world of tactics and reality. They always focus on those goals that can be accomplished through available tactics, never on grandiose plans and impossibilities. Spend energy on realizing dreams. (This paragraph is very important. Sometimes you will stay in the wild sky. If you can hold the reins firmly, it may be a good personal advantage, not a disadvantage.)

If action implies strategy, then strategy implies tactics. This is a continuum, and if you try to separate them at any point, you will suffer the consequences.

Knowledge about tactics can help you develop strategies that enable a company's set of courses of action.

Once this step is recognized, strategy takes the lead to guide the appropriate tactics.

Setting strict boundaries between tactics and strategy will hinder the entire process.

The number of active reserve forces is usually a major concern for both commanders.

The commander with a stronger reserve army has control of the battlefield. But it does not devote all its troops to every battle.

A good general will try to win without mobilizing all his reserves.

The above is the concept of a reserve army in a tactical sense, which is a force that can be put into battle immediately if needed; a strategic reserve force is another matter. The army cannot rely on soldiers who are first recruited and then trained before they can be used.

Clausewitz warned that the strategic reserve army could not be relied on, which he believed was a local incoordination. If it is a force in a strategic sense, it cannot be called a reserve force. In other words, these troops cannot be deployed The combat commander immediately mobilizes and goes into battle as soon as the order is given.

An entrepreneur who invests in two businesses instead of one will fall into the trap of having a strategic lack of backup. One business cannot serve as a backup for the other because neither investment is readily available in the economic moment liquidation.

Better yet, start a business and leave the flow yourself as a backup force.

This principle also applies to companies that try to put too much product on too many fronts in too little time. The main question they have to ask is: "Where are the reserves?"