This document provides guidance on identifying the core reasons a company exists through defining its vision, values, beliefs, positioning, and value proposition. It prompts companies to determine: 1. Their vision for what they want to be known for and their core values and beliefs. 2. Their unique selling point and the customer needs they satisfy. 3. Their ideal customers and why those customers should choose them over competitors. The goal is to establish a clear and simple raison d'être, or reason for being, that can guide all business decisions and be understood by both employees and customers.

1. Why Does Your Company Exist?
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2. Vision:
For every supplier to
the big four UK
supermarkets to want
our products.
Values:
To make our training
stick.
Beliefs:
That by making our
training stick with our
clients they will retain,
increase their use and
refer our products.
How we behave:
Like people from the
UK Grocery Industry
that are very credible
and trusted advisors
People Development..
How we look:
Like people from the
UK Grocery Industry
that are very credible
and trusted advisors
on People
Development.
How we talk:
Like people from the
UK Grocery Industry
that are very credible
and trusted advisors
People Development.
Strapline:
80% of our Learners are still
using their new habit 5
months later - guaranteed
Positioning:
Like finding and
working with ‘one of
their own’ and who
a way of making
learning stick.
Life DiagramAn example of how a company
identifies why it exists.
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3. 1. What do you want to be, as a business?
• The stickiest?
• The biggest?
• The fastest?
• The most…?
• The cheapest?
• The greatest…?
• The first for...?
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4. 2. What are you good at, as a business?
• Being efficient?
• Being cheap?
• Being a great employer?
• Being innovative?
• Being first to market?
• Being known for taste?
• Being brilliant at?
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5. 3. What is the need that your business exists
to satisfy?
Smart companies know that they don’t
sell drill bits, they sell holes...
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6. 4. What is your USP, as a business?
A unique selling point is something people come to you for and cannot get
anywhere else. If you cover-up your logo on your website, what could you say
that non-one else can say?
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7. 5. What space does your business
want to own?
• Meat supply to supermarkets across the
world?
• Convenience?
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8. 6. Who are your 5* customers?
• If you have to name your ideal customers
what 5 characteristics would they have?
– Over billion pounds each?
– A supermarket?
– A meat seller?
– Over 400 stores each?
– Within Europe?
– Trading poorly?
– Eager to swap suppliers?
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9. 6. Why should your customers give their money
to you and not your competitors?
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10. 7. What problem does your business solve?
• Most customers don’t buy what the supplier
sells.
• This is known as ‘equalling the inside reality
with the outside reality’.
• You’ll buy from your supplier for a reason that
they haven’t thought of.
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11. 8. What do you want to leave as your legacy?
• ‘I made it a billion business’.
• ‘I wanted to be more famous than Persil’
(Victoria Beckham).
• ‘We operate in 30 countries’.
• ‘It is a global brand’.
• ‘Billion pound profit’.
• ‘Sales of x billion’.
• ‘Number one choice for employees’.
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12. 9. How do you want to position yourself
in the market?
• ‘Reassuringly expensive’ (Stella Artois).
• Cheapest (Wal-Mart).
• We look after our employees (Southwest
Airlines).
• ‘Never knowingly undersold (John Lewis).
• On time no matter what (Fedex).
• Happiest (Seattle Fish Company – Worth a watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZKiJejNRtw)
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13. 10. Checklist
• Can your’ reason to be’ (raison d'être) be
understood by my Mum?
• Will your guiding principle help an employee
at their desk make a decision? (Remember the
Southwest Airlines example).
• The answers should help everyone in the
business to choose not what to do as much as
what to do.
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