An organization counts on a Market Leader to:

• Build and work with a top team to develop, maintain, and drive to achieve an annual plan for a well-defined portfolio of current and targeted customers.

• Connect with established and emerging customers to develop a point of view as to where the market is and where it should go and then proactively and systematically drive towards those ends.

• Develop, hold, and communicate a clear understanding of their organization, market, competition, partners, and market trends.

Over the course of a performance period, the organization counts on a Market Leader to always be able to present:

• A credible story about actual performance relative to plan.

• How they will perform  going forward in light of what has happened so far.

The annual plan:

• Clearly articulates the target market, the problem addressed for customers in that market, and the solution offered.

• Sets specific revenue, profit contribution, and growth goals for current and future performance periods (generally years), both as scale numbers and as ratios, which are rational relative to past performance and the performance of similar organizations.

• Details how unit leaders will allocate resources to:
  • Deliver to meet customer commitments on target, on time, and on budget.
  • Extend and expand value delivery for current customers.
  • Develop opportunities to deliver value to current customers in areas of their organizations not already served.
  • Sell products and services to new customers.
  • Build capacity to sell and deliver more value and on a larger scale.

• Makes clear:
  • What assumptions underlie the plan.
  • What might happen that could lead to outperforming plan, how those things will be encouraged to happen, and how the organization is prepared to capitalize if they do.
  • What has to go right, what will be done to make sure it does, and what will be done if it does not.

• Is in-line with and helps achieve overall organization growth and performance goals.

• Draws on and contributes to organization core assets and competencies.

SEE ALSO

How to leaders can get clear about whose problem their organization solves. Sales — Whose Problem Is It Anyway? How to Synchronize Language used in Planning.