The Black Line Between Sales & Marketing Podcast

Episode 25: Being Tactical vs. Being Strategic

Written by Doug Davidoff | Aug 13, 2018 6:04:33 PM

In this episode of the podcast, Mike and Doug discuss what it means to be tactical, versus what it means to be strategic, and how the words "strategic" and "tactical" are often used incorrectly.

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Show Notes

How often is an executive praised for being "strategic"? Conversely, how often is an executive disparaged for being "tactical"? It's known throughout the sales and marketing world that you want to be strategic, but success and failure depends on tactical execution. It's time to embrace tactics. Thinking up a great strategy only works if it's executed properly. Despite this, few salespeople, marketers, and executives are celebrated for their ability to use tactics and execute a strategy. 

Strategy is thought of as the "end all, be all" of sales and marketing, but it's tactics that facilitate that strategy. It's impossible to "do" strategy. The business world often forgets that the moment you start doing something, you're doing tactics. Strategy gets conflated with tactics and goal-setting, but in reality it's neither. If you do strategy on a tactical level, all it creates is chaos. Strategy says "these are the constraints for reaching our objectives" while tactics says "these are the things I can do within these constraints to achieve our objectives." The difference between the two has been blurred through the overuse of each term. Let's celebrate great tacticians as much as we celebrate great strategists. Most importantly, let's no longer mix up tactics and strategy.

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