The purpose of this article is to help business owners understand the key daily decisions that influence dependence on external funding and either limit or expand the growth potential of a business. There are essentially 4 decisions: 1. cash; 2. people; 3. strategy; and 4. execution. This article (#3) addresses strategy, which is the primary driver of growth. If you are not growing in the top tier of your industry segment you have a strategy problem.
The first and most common strategic move for most CEOs in a difficult economy or a sales stall is to “do nothing,” the definition of which is “insanity.” The CEOs won’t admit they’re doing nothing. They will make minor tweaks to their existing strategy, if they even have one, and delude themselves into believing they made significant changes. Or, their big changes only affect the internal company. Growth and sales are always about the customer. The root to a growth issue is the customer’s perceived value of your product or service and whether someone is willing to invest/spend their money with you. When customers stop spending money with you, what they are really saying is that they don’t see enough reason (e.g. value) to give their money to you. This is why this intense focus on cost control today is a big problem. While it is important to manage businesses in a prudent manner, we must balance that with addressing customer needs and wants. Many of the changes companies are making today actually exacerbate their growth problem, negatively affecting customers by reducing the quality of the products and services they receive. What their customers need is more value and service, but companies are moving in the other direction. Rather than cut costs, I suggest spending what it takes to address your customer’s changing needs. Otherwise someone else may get your customers.
In the typical “do-nothing strategy” leaders believe that their growth issues are due to external forces, everyone else is experiencing sales declines, or some other self-limiting belief. So they keep doing the same things, cut costs, and try to wait things out. This strategy has some hidden costs that are never measured such as:
The second path that many CEOs take is to try to redefine their business model. This strategy rarely works, is highly risky, and almost never necessary. It assumes that what the company currently does and its core competencies have no value in the marketplace. This is highly improbable.
The best strategic course of action for a company to take to reignite growth is to utilize strengths already possessed in ways that are important to a specific target customer base. Many times companies define their target customer too broadly or use the wrong criteria, such as company size, geography or some other inappropriate specification. The secret to dramatic increases in growth typically already lies dormant inside your company. You need to recognize it and match it up properly to customer needs. A book called The Inside Advantage by Robert Bloom has captured the essence of identifying more clearly your desired core customers and aligning their needs with your capabilities in a way that dramatically increases growth. If you have a strategy problem here are some thoughts from Inside Advantage and some additional ideas to consider:
Contact me today to learn how Activate Group helps individuals to increase their success and works with organizations to attain consistent revenue and profit growth rates of at least 20% annually. Call [phone link=”true”] or e-mail me at shoreh@activategroupinc.com.