Understand what a mission statement is



A mission statement is simply a statement that encompasses your business's goals and the philosophies by which your business is run. Your mission statement should take into account the following:

The product or service you sell

The price of your product or service

The quality of your product or service

The potential your business has to grow and expand

Specific technology your business uses

Your business's relationship with everyone from your clients and the community to your competition.

Your business's mission statement should be very specific and should tell anyone who reads it your goals for the business.

Research other businesses' mission statements

Before you craft your own mission statement, research the mission statements of other companies to see what they are using and to give you an idea of what works and what doesn't work.

For example, discount store chain Wal-Mart's mission statement is To give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same thing as rich people while Disney's mission statement is To make people happy.

Spend some time looking at well-known companies mission statements, which will both give you an idea of an effective mission statement and may well inspire you as your craft your business's own mission statement.

Identify key components of your business

Once you have an idea of what constitutes a strong mission statement, you must identify:

Your reason for being in business

Your target market, including how your product or service is beneficial to your clients

The image you want your business to project

Your employees' role in your business

Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

The philosophies by which you run your business

The level of service your business provides (i.e. if you claim your business provides top-notch customer service, make sure that your customers actually agree with that statement.)

The ethical position your business has taken

The public image you want to have

Write your mission statement

Now that you've identified the key components of your business, sit down and really think about what you want to convey with your mission statement, referring to those key components as you write. Don't expect to bang out a mission statement in a few minutes; rather, take the time to really write a strong mission statement.

Your mission statement may be a sentence or a few sentences long, or it could be a page long. But, make sure that you keep it concise enough, so that it does not exceed a page.