2929 E. Camelback Road, Suite 117, Phoenix, AZ 85016+1 602-840-0003

Follow us on

Predictable Revenue Growth

SHARE

Predictable Revenue Growth

Through my history as a sales professional, sales manager and now business owner for 20 years, I have studied and supported many businesses in increasing revenue growth. It’s not easy no matter what type of business you have, but it’s a lot harder if you don’t adhere to the following concepts. I have broken down the process of building a solid high-growth business into nine “S”s. for the next several months, I will be releasing chapters of the book I’m writing to help you grow your company. All I ask is for you to give me feedback and ideas about how to make these chapters even more effective to business owners.

Let me take a moment to define my concept of the nine principles that start with the letter “S:” Significance, Society, Segmentation, Solution, Strategy, Structures, Systems, Skills and Style. Here is why they matter.

Significance:

All business owners or leaders need to understand why their company exists. But more importantly, they must know why it is significant. If you don’t understand why your company is significant, how will the market, your customers or your employees know that? I was working with a client earlier today, and I asked what differentiates his company from the competition. He bragged that the turnaround time of the service they provide was much better, but he admitted that the quality of what they do is not as good as the competition. Does this make a significant company? The brutally honest answer is: NO! When you align your company to the significance of who you serve, you company can exponentially grow. See the blog: Promises Matter

Society and Segmentation:

Do you really understand who your client is? This is such an important step to understanding how your company is going to be significant. I need to know what I’m hunting for if I’m going to find it, right? I was so enthused to see marketing companies use the idea of personas in the past few years as a tool to define and target clients. Most of the free persona spreadsheets that are on the web are good. But just filling out the form with words that you made up, without knowing the audience, really doesn’t do you any good! You need to understand the prospective client, both at the intellectual and emotional level to grow your company.  Next, you need to define if you want to be a Generalist or a Surgeon. Can you segment this market to distinguish yourself from the competition even more? The great companies want this niche’ because it separates value and price point. See the Blog: Integrity of business

Solution:

What is the compelling offer that will create action from the prospective client without a long sales cycle? Shortening the sales cycle is not about cash flow as much as it is about expense control. People don’t understand how expensive it is to have a sales process. I love the Idea of closing a new client from your website, but I find this is not always practical. However, you see complete industries and products being created to solve this problem: HubSpot, Active Campaign, Infusionsoft and many more… Most are not delivering the value without a huge investment of resources, time and money. Still, belly-to-belly selling is a necessary ‘evil’ for most B2B and service companies today.

Strategy:

Strategy means different things to different people. In this context, I mean how are we going to attract the right people from our “Segmented Society” to our “Solution” to show and demonstrate our “Significance?” This is very personal to your company and has to be aligned with your Cost of Acquisition (CAQ) and be justified by your Client Lifetime Revenue (CLR). Most successful strategies will also leverage the company culture to help separate them from the competition. Apple had a good strategy when they came to the market with the new storefront concept, only to have Microsoft copy the idea later.

Structure(s):

Make sure all the company structures align with the revenue model. Compensation, delivery, sales, marketing, accounting, engineering, service and organizational structures all impact the ability to do what we say we would for our client. In the absence of the right structure(s), the cost of client acquisition chews away at profit margins and causes chaos within the organization.

Systems:

Are your business processes repeatable, able to be cloned, predictable and measureable? If not, you do not have systems. Systems include anything from onboarding to sales, customer service and other processes that need to be predictable. See the Blog: I’m counting on it.

Skill and Style:

The people you hire to execute everything in the company need to have the right skills and style to connect, make promises and deliver on those promises to your customers. See the Blog: Right thing, Wrong time

 

Posted by Mike Toney / Posted on 02 Aug
  • Post Comments 0