What is a strategy statement?
A strategy statement is a short statement of a company's objective, scope and advantage that guides everyday choices. David Collis and Michael Rukstad set out the idea in Harvard Business Review in 2008. The objective is the specific end the strategy serves. Scope marks the customers, offerings and places where the company will compete. Advantage is the reason customers should choose it over rivals.
Why it matters to a revenue leader
A revenue leader turns strategy into territories, target accounts, pricing and pay. If the company cannot state its scope in a sentence, sellers fill the gap with whatever deal is in front of them, and the pipeline fills with work the operation does not want. In a PE-backed services business, a clear statement also lets acquired companies sell to the same boundaries from their first month on the platform.
Example
Fictitious numbersA commercial HVAC services company writes one sentence: grow recurring maintenance revenue to $40M by 2029 by serving multi-site owners within two hours of its branches, with response times local competitors cannot match. When a seller brings in a large one-time retrofit for a single-site owner three hours away, the statement makes the decision easy to explain to the seller and the customer.
"Could every seller on the team state our scope and our advantage in the same words?"
Sources
- Can You Say What Your Strategy Is? (Harvard Business Review, 2008) checked 9 Oct 2026