A business strategy explains how one company will compete: which customers it serves, what it offers them, and why it will win against the alternatives. It is owned by the managing director and agreed with the owners or board and the managers who run sales, operations and finance.
A complete business strategy for a fictional organization: specialty coffee roaster selling wholesale to independent cafes and online to home subscribers.
| Organization | Specialty coffee roaster selling wholesale to independent cafes and online to home subscribers (60 staff) |
|---|---|
| Ambition | Be the roaster that quality-led independent cafes in our region stay with, growing revenue from $11.5 million to $15.5 million at an 11% EBITDA margin by the end of 2028. |
| Horizon | 2 years |
Revenue is $11.5 million: $7.1 million from 410 wholesale cafe accounts, $3.6 million online from 6,800 subscribers and one-off orders, and $0.8 million from two roastery cafes. Green coffee costs have risen 38% in two years while our wholesale prices rose 9%, so wholesale gross margin has dropped from 43% to 34% and EBITDA is 6% of revenue. We lose 14% of wholesale accounts a year, about half of them to cheaper roasters offering free espresso machines. Online, subscribers cancel at 6.5% a month and the cost to acquire one has gone from $29 to $48.
Challenges| Target customer | Owner-operated cafes and groups of 2 to 10 sites that charge a premium for coffee and use 20 to 150 pounds a week. Online, home brewers who buy whole beans every two to four weeks. |
|---|---|
| Offer | Six year-round coffees and a rotating list of single-origin lots, roasted to order. For cafes: barista training, espresso machine and grinder servicing, and menu costing. For homes: a flexible subscription with brew guides. |
| Geography | Wholesale within a 250-mile radius of the roastery, the distance our vans and technicians can cover in a day. Online orders ship nationwide. |
| Channels | A wholesale team of eight account managers, our own delivery vans inside the metro area and a courier beyond it, the online store, and two roastery cafes. |
| Value proposition | A cafe that works with us serves better coffee and makes more money per cup: fresher beans, trained staff, machines that stay running and a menu priced from real costs. |
|---|---|
| Competitive advantage | Seven in-house technicians and trainers and a training lab, which smaller roasters cannot afford and national roasters do not offer locally. Direct buying relationships with 14 producer groups give us lots that competitors cannot list. |
| Proof | Accounts on a training and service plan renew at 96%, against 83% for bean-only accounts. Technicians reach a broken machine within 24 hours on 92% of calls. Nine of our coffees scored 87 points or more at independent grading last year. |
| Competitor | Their strength | Our difference |
|---|---|---|
| National commercial roasters | Low price per pound and free espresso machines on three-year contracts | Traceable coffee roasted to order, local service, no lock-in contract |
| Other regional specialty roasters | Comparable quality and strong local followings | In-house technicians and a training lab; most sell beans and stop there |
| Cafes roasting their own coffee | Full control and a story to tell customers | Custom house blends without the capital, labor and waste of roasting |
| Online subscription marketplaces | Dozens of roasters in one subscription | Coffee shipped within 48 hours of roasting, and lots they cannot get |
| Supermarket premium brands | Convenience and price | Freshness and origin detail; we do not compete on the shelf |
Priorities and measures
Wholesale is 62% of revenue and its gross margin has fallen nine points in two years. Until prices follow green coffee costs, growth in wholesale makes the business less profitable.
| Outcome | Baseline | Target | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wholesale gross marginMilestones: 38% by Q4 2027 | 34% | 41% | Q4 2028 |
| Wholesale volume sold on cost-indexed price listsMilestones: 40% by Q2 2027 · 65% by Q4 2027 | 12% | 85% | Q4 2028 |
Accounts on a training and service plan renew at 96%, but only 22% of accounts have one. Service is the only part of the offer a cheaper roaster cannot match.
| Outcome | Baseline | Target | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wholesale accounts retained each yearMilestones: 90% by Q4 2027 | 86% | 93% | Q4 2028 |
| Wholesale accounts on a training and equipment service planMilestones: 40% by Q4 2027 | 22% | 60% | Q4 2028 |
| Average annual revenue per wholesale accountMilestones: $18.8K by Q4 2027 | $17.3K | $20.5K | Q4 2028 |
Online earns a 58% gross margin, but paid acquisition at $48 a subscriber with 6.5% monthly churn is an expensive way to grow. Cafe customers already know the coffee and cost far less to reach.
| Outcome | Baseline | Target | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| Active subscribersMilestones: 9,000 subscribers by Q4 2027 | 6,800 subscribers | 12K subscribers | Q4 2028 |
| Monthly subscriber churnMilestones: 5.5% by Q4 2027 | 6.5% | 4.5% | Q4 2028 |
| Cost to acquire a subscriberMilestones: $44 by Q4 2027 | $48 | $40 | Q4 2028 |
Buying 65% of green coffee at spot prices exposes margin to the market, and a single roasting shift already ships a fifth of orders more than 48 hours after roasting. Both get worse as volume grows.
| Outcome | Baseline | Target | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| Green coffee volume bought on forward contracts of six months or moreMilestones: 55% by Q4 2027 | 35% | 70% | Q4 2028 |
| Orders shipped within 48 hours of roastingMilestones: 90% by Q4 2027 | 81% | 97% | Q4 2028 |
The same structure with a prompt in every field. Copy it, or download it as a Word or Excel file.
| Organization | [Describe your organization in a few words, with its size] |
|---|---|
| Ambition | [One sentence on where you want to be at the end of the plan] |
| Horizon | [How long the plan runs, for example 12 months] |
[Where things stand today: the facts that make this strategy necessary]
Challenges| Target customer | [Your target customer] |
|---|---|
| Offer | [Your offer] |
| Geography | [Your geography] |
| Channels | [Your channels] |
| Value proposition | [Your value proposition] |
|---|---|
| Competitive advantage | [Your competitive advantage] |
| Proof | [Your proof] |
| Competitor | Their strength | Our difference |
|---|---|---|
| [Competitor] | [Their strength] | [Our difference] |
| [Competitor] | [Their strength] | [Our difference] |
| [Competitor] | [Their strength] | [Our difference] |
Priorities and measures
[Why this priority matters now, in one or two sentences]
| Outcome | Baseline | Target | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
[Why this priority matters now, in one or two sentences]
| Outcome | Baseline | Target | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
[Why this priority matters now, in one or two sentences]
| Outcome | Baseline | Target | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
[Why this priority matters now, in one or two sentences]
| Outcome | Baseline | Target | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
Describe the target customer narrowly enough that a salesperson would know which leads to turn down.
Calculate gross margin by channel and by customer type before choosing where to play. The most familiar channel is often not the most profitable one.
State the competitive advantage, then test it by asking what would stop the nearest competitor copying it within a year.
Fill in the proof field with numbers you already have, such as retention by customer type. If there is no proof yet, treat the advantage as a hypothesis and measure it.
List competitors as the alternatives customers really consider, including doing it themselves, not only the firms that look like yours.
A plan only works if it is reviewed on a rhythm. This is the cadence the example assumes.
| Check-in | Outcome owners update progress and confidence weekly. |
|---|---|
| Review | Priority owners review outcomes and unblock initiatives monthly. |
| Reset | Leadership revisits priorities and targets quarterly. |
Tability keeps this cadence for you. Each priority becomes an objective, each outcome a key result with its baseline and target, and each initiative a tracked task. Owners get a check-in reminder and the plan shows what is on track.
Track this plan in TabilityStill comparing tools? See the 10 best strategy software tools.
It should include where the business plays (target customer, offer, geography and channels), how it wins (value proposition, competitive advantage and proof), a short view of the main competitors, and the capabilities it needs to build. Add three to five priorities with measurable outcomes and a list of what the business has decided not to do.
A business strategy explains how the company will compete and win. A business plan describes the whole enterprise for lenders or investors, including financial projections, operations and funding needs. The strategy is a few pages and guides decisions; the plan is longer and is usually written to secure money or approval.
Three to five pages is enough for most small and mid-sized companies. That covers a paragraph on the current situation, the where-to-play and how-to-win choices, a competitor table, the capabilities to build and the priorities with their measures. If it runs longer, operating detail has usually crept in.
Check progress against the outcomes every month and review the strategy itself once a year. Revisit it sooner if something material changes, such as a sharp rise in input costs, a new competitor or the loss of a major customer. The choices about customers and advantage should hold for two to three years.
An advantage is hard to copy when it depends on something that takes years or scale to build, such as trained staff, supplier relationships, a service network or customer data. Price and product features are usually matched within months. Test yours by asking what a competitor would have to spend, and how long it would take, to offer the same.
A strategic plan sets out where an organization is heading over the next three to five years, the few priorities that will get it there, and how progress will be measured.
A strategic plan example is a finished plan for a specific organization, showing the diagnosis, the choices made and the measures used to track them.
A corporate strategy decides which businesses a group should own, how capital is divided between them, and what the center does to make each one stronger.
Business strategy template
Horizon: 2 years
4 priorities · 10 outcomes
Targets are illustrative. Adapt them to your baseline before you start.