The Sterce model - Your strategic options

In this series of blogs (predecessors here, here and here), we are delving deeper and deeper into the Sterce model. In the previous blogs, we were mainly concerned with analysing your current situation and way of working. How do you approach the marketing process, but also: what are you good at and where are you less good at? Once that is properly committed to (virtual) paper, we can take a nice next step. We will look at the strategic options at your disposal.

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The confrontation matrix

Setting down your strategic options is done using a so-called confrontation matrix, a marketing classic. This is a table that sets your organisation's strengths and weaknesses against the opportunities and threats from the market. Both the strengths and weaknesses, as well as the opportunities and threats, have been covered in an earlier stage of this blog series and are thus well elaborated. Anyone who has followed these steps will therefore have a good idea of where his or her organisation excels, where it does not excel and where the market offers opportunities or, on the contrary, may work against it.

Creation of a confrontation matrix is the perfect way to get a clear picture of which actions are desired on which fronts. The matrix shows:

• Where strengths should be used to capitalise on opportunities.
• Where strengths should be used to defend against threats.
• Where weaknesses should be strengthened to capitalise on opportunities.
• Where weaknesses need to be strengthened to defend against threats.

It actually sounds relatively simple, but such a matrix actually lays out in black and white in front of you what you will need to work on. It 'confronts' the various facts with each other, offering a clear insight into the strategic options you have.

Roughly speaking, the confrontation matrix offers a choice of four different options. After completing the matrix, you can choose from:

• Grow - If opportunities and strengths find each other in the matrix, the organisation can focus on growth.
• Defend - Should threats and strengths meet, defence is the best option.
• Improve - Weaknesses and an opportunity in the market? Improve these points so you can capitalise on the opportunities.
• Retreat - At the confluence of weaknesses and threats, it is smarter to retreat. You should defend yourself, but you are unable to do so.

Once worked out, completing the confrontation matrix yields the following, albeit somewhat simplified, table:

Reviewing the confrontation matrix

Filling in the confrontation matrix provides clear points where there is room for growth, improvement, defence and change. However, not every confrontation produces the same effect. The effect can be very positive, very negative, neutral and everything in between. Therefore, it is important to assess different confrontations. This can be done in several ways, but the main thing is to be clear at a glance. A good way to assess confrontations is with the use of pluses and minuses. Thus:

• A very positive effect: ++
• A positive effect: +
• A neutral effect: 0
• A negative effect: -
• A very negative effect: --

These pluses and minuses can be added to the matrix in two ways. You can put all the pros and cons in the table and then adorn them with pluses and minuses, but you can also do this in advance, thus providing them with the effects you expect right at the time of determination.

If these pluses and minuses are not enough and you have a good sense of drama, you could also choose to give the confrontations different colours. So dark green for something very positive, dark red for something very negative and some lighter shades for that which is in between. And no colour for neutral effects. It makes the matrix readable at a glance.

Making choices

These options offer numerous possibilities and also force you to make choices. And that is exactly what the Sterce Model was developed for. Well, not just to make choices, but mainly to create clear focal points on which you will then spend most of your time, energy and budget. Too often, trends are responded to ad hoc, or choices are made without any real vision. By maintaining the Sterce Model, on the contrary, you ensure that you make choices that actually suit your organisation and that you will actually be proud of.

Making difficult decisions too

But anyway, we are getting ahead of ourselves. In any case, the confrontation matrix offers a rich stock of options, which everyone would naturally prefer to see yielding strengths in which to focus on growth. But that, of course, is by no means always the case. Sometimes a threat in the market hits you exactly where it hurts and you are unable to address it with your current resources. So in that case, there is a real chance that you will have to decide to discontinue some part of your organisation, or the pursuit of some part of the market. These are often not the easiest decisions to make, but for the sake of your organisation, sometimes very important ones. We will come back to it later in the Sterce Model, but don't be afraid to take these kinds of knots. It may hurt, but it will deliver a strategy that will last you for years to come.

The confrontation matrix often yields options that may not have been considered at all beforehand. This is because people often choose a certain strategy already on gut feeling, without really clearly considering the facts. A matrix like this exposes very clearly what you can work with and what offers the most opportunities. Incidentally, this does not mean that you necessarily have to leave other components out; of course you can give them a place in your strategy. However, these are the most important parts, which we will later refer to as the 'heroes', where the most time, energy and budget will be spent.

In the next chapters of this blog series, we will explain how to make these choices. We will talk about the focus target groups, the heroes, and how you will go about serving this important group.