How To Create A Mission Statement For Your Business

How To Create A Mission Statement For Your Business

Your business's mission statement is an essential component of your business plan. But, perhaps more importantly, it's an essential part of your business's identity. As a result, it's extremely important that you take the time to carefully craft your business's mission statement.

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.