There is a new and better concept called FBA’s, Fundamental Business Activities, that can be owned, measured, and benchmarked to Best In Class. This article focuses on this new management process to achieve success in new and demanding markets in a demanding environment.

This article identifies the most successful approaches as to what/what not to do and why.

1. There are new needs that buyers and customers find critical to their success:
   1. Find them and solve them
   2. Look for new previously unidentified needs
2. Re-establish the Buyer connectivity that is more effective and efficient and consumes between 17% and 30% of the internal resources. 
3. Identity and deliver the critical missing knowledge required across the enterprise
4. Reset the enterprise strategy based on the new intelligence
5. Adopt the critical metrics and establish ownership i.e. TTM (Time To Market), TTP (Time to Profitability) TTTS (Time to Total Customer Satisfaction), three of the mega metrics of the 105 FBA’s (Fundamental Business Activities)
6. Do a zero based budget
7. Improve the Management KEP™ (Knowledge, Experience, and Performance)

ADDRESSING A NEW ECONOMY DEMANDS A NEW STRATEGY

Look for the first signs of new challenges that will come in the following areas:

1. Sales Cycle Increases
2. Buyers lose their budgets
3. Demand for customer services increases
4. Price becomes a target of buyer opportunity
5. Brand starts to erode
6. Finance wants a surge of internal cuts and the same environment exists for the buyers and customers
7. IT (Information Technology) is the first target to cut costs.

This article focuses on the approach and how to make this environment work for the enterprise and its management team.

First is to understand the initial piece of surgery - The current business strategy which has to identify what is happening in following areas:

1. Financial status of target buyers and target markets
2. How to accurately identify the current and new needs of buyers
3. Identify that the target buyers have the support of their constituencies
4. Develop new and value enhanced Market Messages and delivery processes for buyers and their constituencies
5. Identify the critical missing knowledge
6. Marketing’s new role
   1. Buyer attachment in terms of past needs
   2. Buyer attachment of new needs
   3. Buyer success with your products and services

What happens depends on the business environment; customers change their minds on how they score their business partners.

The same products and services lose in customer scoring, witnessed in Table -1 below, as they feel the pressure of their business issues on their enterprise. The critical factors that affect this are as follows:

1. The levels of success they need is not to their new criteria
2. The Business Partner has not recognized their new needs
3. The offering has less than the 80% direct effectiveness of their offering
   1. On average buyers score 36% - 40% of technology offerings as not relevant to their success. Unnecessary functionality or capabilities not used or important to them.
4. The Metrics that count to the customer
   1. ROI
   2. Margin
   3. Cash Flow
   4. Product Cost
   5. Meeting the new needs that have changed
      All now become demands across the enterprise infrastructure not just finance
5. The message to the market does not show leadership and connectivity to buyers and business leaders.
6. The buyer needs process is not effective and therefore one of two things have to happen
   1. They have to tell the business partner their new needs
   2. They need to identify what is outdated and not relevant
7. Total customer satisfaction was not what is should have been or could have been if the seller had an effective and efficient connection with their customers
8. On average sellers spend between 3% and 11% of their time identifying the needs of their target buyers

Table -1 shows the seriousness of the re-evaluation of business partners and suppliers