Writing Your Company’s Mission Statement

This article is an authorized excerpt from Zero to One Million by Ryan P. M. Allis, a book on how to build a company to one million dollars in sales based on the authors’ experience in doing just that in fourteen months in the nutraceuticals industry. Additional information on the book and an extensive entrepreneurship resource can be found at http://www.zeromillion.com.

Once you have your business plan in place, there is just one more element of organizational planning to do. It is very important to come up with, and have all those involved with your company, agree on a common mission statement of your business.

As a new company owner, especially if there is more than one person working on the business, writing the mission statement for your business can be one of the most important things you can do. Often you will have rather different ideas among partners as to the direction and strategy of a company. By answering the questions below collaboratively and creating one document that all involved in the company agree to and sign, you will not only minimize headaches and arguments down the road but also be fully aligned on your goals and be able to work together efficiently.

Mission statements can be short or they can be long, up to a couple pages. You may wish to come up with both a short mission statement that you’ll show to all your customers and promote and a longer statement for internal guidance and planning. Here are three steps to coming up with a short mission statement.

Step One: Identify the target customer
Step Two: State what you’ll provide to customers
Step Three: State what differentiates your firm

Examples of short mission statements include:

Avis - Our business is renting cars. Our mission is complete customer satisfaction.

Eastman Kodak - To be the world’s best in chemicals and electronic imaging

McDonald’s – To offer the fast food customer food prepared in the same high quality manner worldwide, tasty and reasonably priced, delivered in a consistent, low-key décor and friendly atmosphere.

If you plan to write a longer mission statement, simply answer the following ten questions.

Ten Questions Your Mission Statement Should Answer

1. What problem(s) do you solve? What need(s) do you fulfill?
2. What do you sell? How do you make your money? What is your revenue model?
3. How are you unique from everyone else out there? What is your unique selling proposition?
4. Who will you sell to? What is your target market?
5. What are your economic/financial goals?
6. What are your social/community goals?
7. What type of company do you want to create? Will you build a lifestyle or high potential company?
8. Where is the company going? What products/services/industries do you plan to venture into?
9. What is your five year strategy? Do you want to sell internationally, build an online store, franchise your business, build certain partnerships, develop additional products?
10. Do you ever plan on selling the company or going public? What is your exit strategy?

It may take weeks and multiple meetings and editing to get the responses to the above questions to be agreed upon by all parties and a single document created that all will sign. While it takes time, I cannot emphasize enough the important of having such a document. As stated above, it will not only dramatically reduce conflict and prevent arguments, but will also align all in your business with the same goals, in turn creating a much more effective team and much more profitable business.

Ryan Allis, is the CEO of Broadwick Corporation, a provider of permission-based email marketing and list management software IntelliContact Pro (www.intellicontact.com) and CEO of Virante, Inc. (www.virante.com) a Chapel Hill, North Carolina based web marketing consulting firm. Ryan, who is 19, is on leave for a year from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he is an economics major and Blanchard Scholar. Additional information on the author can be found at www.ryanallis.com.