Tactical Thinking vs. Strategic Thinking

closeup of a chess victory

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As a business owner, you have one job and one job only:

To constantly build and maintain your edge in the market.

This takes many forms – from delivering an awesome customer experience (which includes providing a great product or service) to having a system for consistently attracting leads, converting those leads into buyers, and keeping your buyers coming back for more.

Following me?

Many times, entrepreneurs get stuck with the basic idea that they need a marketing funnel – and once they build it, everything will be okay.

So they build tripwire funnels, webinar funnels, product launch funnels, sales funnels, Facebook funnels, and the list goes on.

There’s a funnel for just about anything you can imagine.

A quick, cursory search on Google gives us over 11 million results (I can almost feel you getting overwhelmed… Don’t worry, Uncle Charlie has your back).

Understand that there are generally two types of business owners out there, tactical thinkers and strategic thinkers:

Group #1 – The Tactical Thinkers

This group buys every course they can get their hands on – and they’ll build new sales and marketing funnels as often as they change their socks.

As soon as the marketing funnel doesn’t turn out the way they had hoped, they convince themselves that it doesn’t work for their business… And they’ll go on to the next shiny penny.

Tactical Thinkers have the “get rich quick” syndrome, which is a symptom of “immature experience.” In other words, after enough time in the trenches (and realizing it’s much harder to think tactically), they’ll eventually make it into the next group…

So, who are the people that get the biggest results?

The folks in Group #2… These are the strategic thinking entrepreneurs I get most excited to work with.

Group #2 – The Strategic Thinkers

Folks in this group masterfully create, engineer, and execute results-oriented systems for MAXIMUM results

And unlike the tactical thinkers, the Strategic Thinkers think in terms of systems, and they understand the concept of leverage.

Let me explain:

Recently, I went through The Funnel Audit Process (that you’re about to learn in the next post) with one of my Platinum Coaching clients.

He had a webinar funnel that was underperforming, and he reached out to me for help.

After making a few changes, he went from breakeven to (within one month) creating a funnel that gave him $2.90 for every dollar he invested in traffic.

Imagine that!

For every $1,000 he invested in traffic, he returned $2,900 (I’d suggest seeking professional help if those numbers don’t excite you)!

You see, many people think the solution to their sales problem is to get MORE traffic, but in the wise words of George H.W. Bush:

READ MY LIPS: Traffic is never the problem.

Okay, maybe Bush didn’t say those “exact” words…

The point is that you have MORE ways to get traffic to your website than we’ve ever had in history.

What’s missing?

You need a profitable funnel.

Once you have a funnel producing a positive ROI, you can scale and create as much wealth as you want. That’s the real wealth.

We call it Funnel Leverage.

Think about the implications of this:

Once you develop a consistent and positive ROI, the fastest and easiest way to increase your profits is to scale and incrementally increase your investment.

As you increase your marketing budget, you increase your revenues. It’s simple math.

In this example, the client progressively (within a few months) increased his investment to over $35,000. That money has averaged around a 2.7 ROI, bringing him just over $94,000 (but as you’ll see, it gets better).

He can easily turn that into a million dollar a year marketing funnel. Easily.

That’s what’s so exciting about strategic thinking!

You see, building a marketing funnel is fine, but more often than not, it’s not the funnel that fails you – it’s the SYSTEM that fails you.

That’s why – when you do what I’m about to show you in the next post – you’ll see how I can go into just about any sales or marketing situation and turn a losing campaign into a wildly profitable one.

And it’s my goal that you’ll be able to do the same…

A few years ago, my wife (Heather) and I had dinner with one of the “rich dads” from the “Rich Dad Poor Dad” series (yes, there are two).

My wife asked the rich dad what he believed to be the biggest secret to success – and he responded:

“Stay in line.”

He said that, metaphorically, success is very much like a cafeteria line…

When you walk into the cafeteria, you have your choice of many different lines to get in.

For the most part, they’re all pretty equal – you just need to pick one.

And when you finally decide to get in line, the goal is to get your food and make it to the cash register.

But most people (the Tactical Thinkers), look around at all the other lines and somehow believe that another line is moving faster… So they get out of the line they were in and move to the back of the next line… But not the strategic thinkers.

I experience this phenomenon when I’m stuck in traffic.

I get in one lane, and think the other lane is moving faster – so I jump out and get in the other one, and guess what happens?

The lane I just got out of starts moving faster!

Perhaps you can relate.

The same thing happens in this cafeteria line story…

Tactical Thinkers see one line that appears to be moving faster, so they jump out and get into the back of the line they think is “better.”

It’s a never-ending spiral, and that’s why it takes Tactical Thinkers so long to reach the success they’re after… They’re always chasing the next shiny penny.

So, understand this:

Right now, there are tons of overlooked opportunities in your business. TONS of areas you can generate profit by thinking more strategically.

Over time, I can show you how to find all of them.

But first, remember that if you want to create consistent, predictable, and ever-increasing cash flow – you MUST put your stake in the ground and get yourself to the “cash register” before moving to the next strategy.

That’s what truly Strategic Thinkers do. 

Setting suitable objectives and identifying strategies or opportunities are vital to growing a business. Nevertheless, you need to turn your ideas into actions if you want to achieve your end goals. Read about tactical planning in this related piece.

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