Intending to Grow Your Business in 2018? Do SOMETHING!
We’re just finishing our year-end review, identifying the most important and concerning findings from 2017, as related to intentional business growth. It was a unanimous decision by our team that “doing nothing” remains the greatest detriment to successful growth which we encounter.
My definition of “intentional business growth” refers to an executable strategy and plan that produces positive, tracked results toward your growth target.
It is possible to grow your business without a specific plan; but, I would argue it’s impossible to create strong growth results without intentional effort.
Ninety percent of the owners we counsel will claim that their business is showing growth, yet so few are executing a plan. Imagine the results, were growth actually planned!
There are many contributors to growth:
- Older companies may enjoy growth mainly due to their established reputation.
- Newer, more aggressive companies can experience top line growth as they disrupt their market with low profit-no profit deals hoping to energize their back-end service and supply revenues. In relation to this, one of the most popular comments I hear is, “we just can’t compete when it comes to price!” What’s funny is, that comment applies across all brands and markets.
- Reacting to new opportunities presented through new technologies, some companies scale for growth – expanding into new verticals as they implement more efficient business processes.
- Market consolidation, for some businesses, presents rapid opportunities to conquer larger territories and area of specialty – resulting in growth due to business absorption or a customer-driven, elevated demand for services.
The facts are; an intentional growth strategy is necessary to guide your business and should point you at moderate to higher profit opportunities.
No one wants to set a plan to pick up low profit-no profit business. It’s imperative to choose the right targets for the right products in your growth plan. If you choose to hunt elephants with longer sales cycles, (and I don’t advise it), you must be able to fund that timeline. I do see sales organizations struggle trying not to run out of money before their sales results arrive.
Remember your business growth plan needs to consider what you are today. All advancement is based on that truth.
This may be an obvious assertion, but doing nothing does something to the culture of a company. Allowing your company to operate with a stagnant demeanor has a negative impact on many things. Negative attracts and creates more negative. For example; dealers ask me all the time; “where do I find quality people?” Let me tell you, people talk and anyone whose worth hiring will sniff out a stagnant culture. Remember you’re competing for quality employees just like you’re competing for quality sales.
Hand in hand with the stagnant culture comes stagnant everything else. Some owners who are in the do-nothing mode claim that they’ve tried everything, and nothing seems to work because they simply can’t complete with the BIG BOYS. That defeated mentality flows down hill. It creates the revolving door that most dealers are battling every month. As far as sales go, doing nothing produces a “get all you can get” cheap price result and not a value sales result.
I’ve said many times before if a business is only renewing 95% of their lease portfolio, and the net new growth plan is to “get all you can get”, most likely that company is shrinking. Sure, with the occasional large deal your numbers will grow, but most likely the overall value of the company is not improving. In other words you’re just processing more paperwork, money and effort.
Do you want to change this pattern? There really is good news in the above opinion because it describes MOST OF YOUR COMPETITORS. You don’t have to settle for doing nothing, like they do.
If you want to develop an intentional growth plan and really put your heart into it, you would be amazingly unique, or at least part of a smaller elite group.
Just having a plan creates a competitive advantage for which your competitors won’t be prepared. It’s harder than you think, but not impossible to build.
The restaurant business is split it into the two pieces, the “front of the house” and “back of the house.” The back of the house is the kitchen. It’s behind the scenes and everyone knows the importance of their jobs. The back of the house serves both the front of the house and indirectly the customers. The front of the house is equally important as it sells the overall experience and quality of food. If the restaurant delivers a quality experience, it is typically packed.
In our industry any good business plan is multi-faceted. The parts break down in several ways. You review the previous year’s results, your marketplace, your industry, technology requirements and your company’s ability to execute and implement deliverables. Each area should be analyzed and adjusted to achieve the results you desire. Most Dealers are pretty capable when it comes to planning through the back of the house. However, in the front of the house, it seems that the details are often vague to non-existent. Sure, often the products and pricing are set, comp plans are all in place, the website is polished, but when it comes to an intentional growth strategy and planning, I seldom see anyone executing anything.
If you follow any of the articles I’ve posted in ENX Magazine, then you’ll know that I believe a strong pipeline of opportunity does not happen by accident.
The details of your growth plan must be developed down to the smallest detail. The first step; be honest! Second step; evaluate all levels of management, including yourself. Since you’re the driving force behind the results your company produces, have an outside expert evaluate you and your practices. Ideally, it should be a growth expert, someone who can show you best practices in business development and market penetration. Most importantly, fire the shot over the bow and let everyone in your company know that you’re seeking best practice in everything to encourage them be more successful and to create a “great place to work” reality.
While there are thousands of things to consider, I’ll share my thoughts regarding the topics of; intentional growth strategies, forecast and win history, go-to-market research and best practices.
Building an Intentional Growth Strategy and Plan
As the owner, it starts with you. You must take all of the data gathered from your business review discoveries and seed your growth-plan with purpose and intention. It’s not about one product or another. It’s about a scalable-repeatable process that delivers to both your net new revenue or profit requirements and assures a relevant position in your marketplace. When you build your growth plan you have to accept and responsibly lead your organization THROUGH THE TRANSFORMATION. In order for any business plan to be successful you have to hold yourself accountable to your team members and them to you! Anything less and it’s likely to fail.
Your Forecast and Win History
Evaluating your company’s forecast and win history helps to provide the necessary data to create future growth calculations. This is easier to establish on comfortable/existing products and solutions. Adding in products and solutions that you haven’t yet sold makes forecasting more difficult, but all products contribute to growth and you need to consider that information as well. Remember your intentional growth plan should be mostly focused on net new customers and not just expanding existing relationships.
Your Go-to-Market
Maintaining and adding the right products and solutions that match your market’s demand is imperative. You will find that some market research is required to establish what products and solutions are needed to support your intentional growth plan. This is where you really need to consider not being a “me too” company and let the market tell you what it wants. I’m told all the time that market research is too expensive and thus few employ that method of discovery. I say, use your sales team and give them the top questions you’d like to discover and turn them loose on recon activity. It’s very possible they’ll find business along the way. Keep in mind:
Market research is serious and whatever you do to gather it, should provide you with solid useful information.
One of the best ways to discover new products or solutions is to ask your sales reps about the times you told them “NO” when they wanted to sell something that wasn’t on your menu. If you said no often about a certain type of product, that might indicate something new to consider for the future.
A great go-to-market plan should put you in front of your competitors and not in the middle of the pack.
Once you nail down your products and solutions, this helps define the job description and profile for the sales team you’ll require. You must not skip this stage. If you fail to realign your sales team for the future, no growth plan will work.
Think about this path logically.
An intentional growth plan begins with evaluating you and your leadership, better leaders wisely demand market research, market research leads to discovering best products and solutions, identifying those products and solutions pinpoints the attributes your sales team must possess! It makes great sense doesn’t it?
Execution
No magic here, if your execution is weak, it’s most likely your own fault. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. Lead from the front, explain your value, your targets and the opportunity. It always amazes me when I visit a specific marketplace, where in the same town three dealerships are singing the blues, yet the fourth is just cranking success. Why? It’s in their plan to succeed! So, build your plan, even if it’s not exactly right, build it anyway. Because doing nothing – does something, and it’s not good!
