FIRM UP YOUR GROWTH PLAN

GROWTH IS ESSENTIAL FOR A COMPANY

Sustainable profitable growth. Sales growth. Grow company's value. All commonly accepted business terms delved from a random selection of growth plans I get to see. It basically comes down to that one thing: selling more of a company's stuff. The importance of top-line growth overshadows all other metrics like growing the bottom-line or added value to the customer or client. More turnover makes the shareholder´s clock ticks, dictates how renumeration is set-up, steers how management and employees behave. I have also been part of and even detrimental to this way of thinking both when I started after university as an external consultant as well as later on working in the Business myself … chasing the top-line growth phantom.

WHY VAST MAJORITY OF COMPANIES DO NOT ACHIEVE THEIR GROWTH PLANS

Business Growth Plans are exemplary for that upward aspiration. Therefore bring to the show new market entries or new product launches (or both!) or even new product launches in new markets to reach new turnover heights. However, when it comes to achieving those growth plans, reality is harsh. In B2B over 70% fail. Why? Dozens of reasons and excuses, but my take on it why growth plans seldom get achieved is due to three things. Growth plans generally are: way too optimistic (the infamous hockey stick), shockingly Inside-Out, and quite flimsy in working out how to get to that growth.

UNDERSTANDABLE: POSITIVE VIEW

To a degree I can understand why growth plans are too optimistic, Inside-out and do not go into the how. Makes life more simpler, does it not? With assumptions of customer needs, imagined partners’ willingness and comfortably leaving competition out of the equation the world most certainly does  look a lot more brighter. Add to the mix that senior managers go after success, and successful persons have the habit that enough is simply never enough. Together of course with the hot breath of shareholders in their necks to push the envelope. So that explains that Senior management almost always sends Concept Growth plans back to business leaders to have the Sales growth figures raised in its final version. But my empathy ends here.

NOT UNDERSTANDABLE: LACK OF OUTSIDE-IN REALITY AND (COLLECTIVE) MEMORY

What I cannot understand is that when (not if … when) the growth plan is not met the year after, some excuses come to table – and get accepted, just for not having to lower ambitions for the following year. There simply seems to be a lack a (collective) memory in a company when it comes to business growth plans. Even more concerning, I quite often see a loss of touch with Outside-in reality when people get involved with be it writing, judging, or funding a growth plan. With no Outside-In reality I mean growth plans are too often written in isolation from customers and partners, lack underpinning, and have no substantiation with market research. And there must be a thieve amongst us! In almost every growth plan the last part seems to be missing. Who is that who steals the section in which the approach plan gets worked out what it really takes in terms of time, money and warm bodies?

A SERIES OF FIVE BLOGS TO EXPLAIN HOW YOU CAN FIRM UP YOUR GROWTH PLAN

In a series of five blogs I will explain how you can firm up your growth plan. Those of you still reading at this point will most probably by now get the point I am trying to make in this first blog: continuing writing your business growth plans the old way will not contribute to growing your business. In the next two articles I will introduce a proven four step Strategic Marketing approach how you can firm up your growth plan. The approach is not just about easing down the growth curve. It is about giving you peace of mind through clarity on an Outside-In growth forecast, matched with a worked-out Offer ànd accompanied with allocation of money and people in a realistic time-frame. In the penultimate article I will round of by sharing what I believe should be a mandatory five-chapter-outline of a FirmGrowthPlan. Then finally in the last article I will share my view why I believe every B2B company has the potential to become (or remain) market leader in its industry. Until my next blog!