Every business, organization or company has a fundamental purpose and specific audience that they aim to help. Whether you’re a small startup or a global enterprise, it’s important for your business to have a statement that represents these values and describes the needs your business was created to fulfill. Mission and vision statements allow you to define your business goals and philosophy by reflecting on the work you do and how it achieves specific objectives.
A business mission and vision statement empowers and guides you and your team to keep your overall destination in mind with each new target, plan and project. Keep reading to learn how to write a business vision statement and why they’re an integral part of any business.
In This Article
- What Is a Business Mission and Vision Statement?
- Why Are Business Mission and Vision Statements Important?
- How to Write a Business Mission and Vision Statement
- Define What You Do
- Determine How Your Business Stands Out
- Gather Testimonials
- Be Specific and Relatable
- Conduct Competitive Research
- How to Ensure the Effectiveness of Your Business Mission and Vision Statement
- Write Your Business Mission and Vision Statement Today
What Is a Business Mission and Vision Statement?
A business mission statement is a brief description that defines an organization’s fundamental purpose, objectives and approach to achieve those objectives. Every company has different values and goals, so every mission statement will vary. However, each mission plan should broadly describe a company’s current customer focus in a way that all internal and external audiences can understand.
A mission statement aims to answer the following questions:
- Why do we exist?
- What do we do?
- How do we do it?
- Whom do we do it for?
A vision statement, on the other hand, describes the future position your business desires to reach. You can use a vision statement to represent your inspiration for the future and articulate your organization’s hopes and dreams for what you are trying to build down the line. While a vision statement represents a picture of the future and serves as the foundation for operational and strategic planning, it doesn’t necessarily explain how you’re going to get there.
Ultimately, a vision statement depicts an idealistic, long-term state of the future of your business, while a mission statement should represent the roadmap to that specific destination and how you will achieve it. These terms are often combined to provide a comprehensive statement for an organization or company.
Why Are Business Mission and Vision Statements Important?
Mission and vision statements are an integral part of the corporate strategy process. These statements act as bookends for every operational and strategic plan — something your business needs to thrive and complete projects and goals efficiently. Think of your mission statement are the starting line and a vision statement as your finish line. They remind your team, your stakeholders and your audience of how your present activities are helping you reach your end goal.
Without mission and vision statements, your plans and projects may be too vague, making it hard for team members to be on the same page when implementing initiatives. Mission and vision statements are important because they ensure management alignment and help measure the success of your programs and projects. Without a representative statement for your brand, it can be difficult to determine if you’re making the right decisions and on the right track.
The biggest benefit of a business mission and vision statement is putting your organization on the map and getting yourself noticed by potential supporters. Whether you work for a nonprofit and want to increase donors or in the commercial sector and want to target a new consumer audience, it’s important that everyone who interacts with your business understands how you benefit the community.
How to Write a Business Mission and Vision Statement
Though writing a mission and vision statement is a varied process because it requires unique information from each organization, you must ensure your statement accurately reflects your company and connects with your audience. Follow these best practices below if you want to learn how to write a business mission statement or revise the one you currently have.
1. Define What You Do
Before you can write an overarching, personalized mission and vision statement, you need to start with the basics. Define your business objective and what your audience or a customer may be able to do or gain from your product or service. Focus on what you actually do before getting into the outcomes you aim to achieve.
Remember, some potential new customers and supporters who are not familiar with your business will be reading your mission statement for the first time, so it’s important not to assume they know the purpose behind your company.
2. Determine How Your Business Stands Out
Keep in mind that, to consumers today, there are very few products or services that seem new. In your business’s life span, you’ve likely identified your competitors and why you believe your company will be successful in comparison. Find your unique selling point and go with it. Whether you founded the business on century-old traditions passed through generations of family or provide only high-quality products that meet a unique problem for your customers, let it shine in your mission and vision statement.
3. Gather Testimonials
If you aren’t sure how to make your mission and vision statement stand out, collecting customer reviews and testimonials is an excellent way to see how your business has positively impacted other people or businesses. Gather around with your team and review these testimonials and highlight the ways that your business really went above and beyond. Use this material to influence your mission and vision statement and describe how your business solves a particular problem.
4. Be Specific and Relatable
Because your mission and vision statement should be brief — a few sentences at the most — it’s vital to avoid making broad, unrealistic claims. Ironically, you don’t want to be too visionary in your statement because it can turn a solid future vision in your customer’s mind to skepticism and confusion.
While it’s fine to make bold statements and show that your business aims to go further than competitors in your field, be sure that the language you use is relatable and detailed enough that every member of your audience can easily comprehend it and visualize it along with you! Be sure to choose memorable statements that your customers can seamlessly transform into a mental picture.
5. Conduct Competitive Research
If you and your team find yourself with writer’s block while crafting your mission and vision statement, researching your competitors is an effective way of learning how they are connecting with your similar audience. With a simple online search, you can find thousands of business vision and mission statement examples and see how they present their product or service as a unique solution to your customer’s needs.
How to Ensure the Effectiveness of Your Business Mission and Vision Statement
Writing your business mission and vision statement is the easy part. The hard part comes with implementing it. Upholding and adhering to your business’s mission and vision statement is one of the most effective ways to reach your intended consumers and audience. With AchieveIt’s strategic planning software, you can simplify plan execution and implementation and keep all your team members connected across your projects.
Our solutions allow you to manage and track your performance to help you achieve more and stay aligned with your business mission and vision statement. With software that makes it easier to focus on your most important initiatives by reducing manual processes, you can spend more time ensuring your business is living up to the purpose and goal in your statement.
Write Your Business Mission and Vision Statement Today
Having a well-written business mission and vision statement is critical for your teams to know the values and goals that your company lives by. However, ensuring that every project, plan and initiative aligns with your mission and vision statement is how you bring those values to life for your stakeholders and customers. At AchieveIt, it’s our mission to help businesses and organizations connect, manage and execute these plans while improving accountability, visibility and uniformity between all team members.
Building a plan may be easy enough, but executing it requires much more effort. With our integrated planning solutions, you can reduce manual processes and ensure each project stays on track with your company’s goals and objectives. Download our free strategic planning template or contact us today to learn how our solutions can help your business bring your mission and vision statement to life.
