What is Your Mission Statement?

mission statement
The mission statement for small businesses is important part in reaching the road to really big entrepreneurial success. However, there are many problems that many entrepreneurs simply ignore or they doesn’t see them.

It seems so simple, but small businesses are so much dependent on this short but important sentence called mission statement.

I do not believe that we can find a company without a formal or non-formal mission statement. At least most of them have a special web page on their website that stated this sentence more as a marketing weapon to attract potential customers.

But, the problem isn’t about having a mission statement on the web site. The problem is more substantial and in large part is based on the following truths:

  • Many mission statements don’t reflect the reality of the business and
  • Importance of the mission statement is underestimated from entrepreneurs.

So, why we need such a statement.

The business mission should define what the business wants to make at least for four categories:

In most simplest words, the mission is the reason why your company exist in the reality or on the market where it exist.

If you check some of the mission statements of small business, you can see that they are structured as the following:

This is a short version. It can have several sentences, but most are blah, blah, blah…

Often times, when I ask entrepreneurs for whom they will provide their products and services they simply tell me that they provide their products and services for their customers. I continue with the question: Who they really are? Again, the answer is our customers. Tell me something more specific about them? And then there is the biggest problem when they say: anyone, what’s a matter?

The thinking behind this answer is that everyone who can become a customer is welcomed. However, this thinking is so wrong and can be really terrific for all small business owners.

You can’t satisfy everyone! You need to know exactly who you want to be satisfied through the processes in your company.

Who are your customers?

Do you know them well enough?

It seems that key questions doesn’t have an appropriate and true answer.

If you want to meet their needs, you will need to know much more things about them. When you know them better, you will need to specify your mission statement when it comes to your customers. It is not only for you. It is for everyone else in your company, and also for your external environment.