“Business principles are only as good as the practices that back them up.”
– Chip Conley
Developing effective growth strategy is never easy.
The good news: While it is difficult, it is not impossible.
Fortunately, there are a few time-tested and proven growth principles. If you follow them, they will reduce your up-front time and effort while significantly increasing the chances of success.
Over the span of many years in growth leadership and consulting roles, I have enjoyed great success by following these simple, yet powerful, fundamentals. Now you can too.
If you follow these guiding principles, in sequential order, you will have the building blocks to create an effective growth strategy for your organization.
The 10 Commandments
Most of us are aware of the Ten Commandments, the set of biblical principles relating to ethics and worship that play a fundamental role in Judaism and Christianity.
While not quite as enduring or carved in stone like the original Ten Commandments, I believe these ten growth strategy principles can be very useful and informative for leaders seeking to grow their organization.
Here they are:
1 – Know Who You Are
This growth strategy commandment is first for a reason.
Why? In order for effective strategic planning to take place, you have to know who you are. In this context, “you” is referring to the organization.
This is your starting point.
Knowing the Core Ideology (Mission, Values, and Purpose) of your organization, and ensuring they are in alignment with your product(s)/service(s) and brand, is crucial for effective growth strategy.
If these elements are not in alignment, your growth initiative is highly likely to fail before it ever gets to see the light of day.
2 – Know Where You Want to Go
Every leadership team has dreams and aspirations for where they want to take the organization. Knowing your Envisioned Future (Vision, and Long-term Goals) is vitally important for effective strategic planning and execution.
As the old saying goes, if you don’t know where you are going, then how will you know when you get there?
Having clarity around your desired future state will provide focus, inspiration, and a convenient measuring stick to track your progress.
3 – Have a Plan
Once you know your starting point, and your intended destination, you are then in an excellent position to plot out a path forward for the organization.
In strategic planning, I call this stage the growth strategy thesis.
It is the product of all your understanding, insight, and best thinking about how you will navigate the Strategic Gap that exists between where you are today and your destination.
Your growth strategy thesis and plan become the roadmap you will use to reach the long-term goals of the organization.
Why is it a thesis? Because it is your best guess as to the path forward. The truth is you will not know until you start executing. Your strategy thesis is what you and your team are going to follow until you learn otherwise from market feedback. Then you can listen and pivot as required in order to keep moving towards your long-term goals.
There are many distractions for growth leaders when creating a strategic plan. The most successful ones focus on the fundamentals first:
- Vision before strategy.
- Strategy before tactics.
- Focus on the big rocks first, in priority order.
- Walk before you run.
4 – Get Real
Growth leaders need to practice a special kind of honesty.
This involves much more than just being truthful in our business dealings. Growth leaders need to have radical candor in assessing their organization, its product(s)/service(s), competitors, and the marketplace.
I call this getting real.
It plays out like this: If you are not real about your organization and the environment, then you are very likely to be unpleasantly surprised in the future.
Many of us have been witness to this kind of dangerous thinking in the business world. A few common examples:
- “We don’t have any competitors.”
- “Our customers love us.”
- “ACME Company isn’t anything to worry about.”
- “Every company needs our solution.”
- “Our Widget is better than anything else out there.”
Successful growth leaders start their journey with deep introspection about the organization and the solutions they deliver to the market. After this growth assessment, they will also spend a lot of time out in the market gaining better Situational Awareness about the market(s) where they compete.
This level of honesty is the most important part of strategic planning. You have to put everything (good, bad, and ugly) on the table so that you can objectively evaluate it and plan around it.
Do not try to put lipstick on a pig…that generally only makes things worse.
Get real. If your product or service is crap, fix it. If you do not have the right team, make a change.
5 – Know Your Target (Market)
In addition to having clarity around long-term organizational goals, growth strategists also must strive to gain clarity around the target market for their solutions.
This often begins with market segmentation and analysis. Then, thinking deeply about where the organization can effectively compete and win.
These insights are often documented in the form of personas and an ideal client profile (ICP in growth parlance). Having consensus on this information is crucial in order for go-to-market teams to be able to do their jobs.
With personas and ICPs, marketing teams can define positioning and messaging, and develop appropriate lead generation campaigns. Sales teams can identify qualified prospects and know how best to close sales.
6 – Understand Your Buyer’s Journey
Knowing your target is not enough.
An equally important, and often overlooked, part of understanding your target market is to understand how prospects buy. This so-called “buyer’s journey” is the key to unlocking the puzzle of how to gain more sales, quicker.
Most go-to-market (GTM) organizations get this completely wrong.
Their mistake is to think that the prospects they have identified as ideal targets will fall into line and proceed stage-by-stage through the sales funnel that the sales organization has carefully designed. This is hardly ever how it happens in the wild.
Buyers are doing their own research, developing their own solutions, and working through internal approvals all outside of the view of sellers. In fact‚ Gartner research finds that when B2B buyers are considering a purchase‚ they spend only 17% of that time meeting with potential suppliers.
They are on their own buyer’s journey.
Smart sellers attempt to understand as much as possible about this journey, and then line up their sales process with the buyer’s buying process.
An important takeaway: Marketing enables sales. If you understand the buyer’s journey, you can then map the right marketing activities, educational content, and sales activities, to help coach and move the buyer along their buyer’s journey.
7 – Define Your Unique Selling Proposition
There are many ways to define value for a customer. However, one thing is true: If your prospect does not find value in what you are trying to sell them, they will not buy. Period.
In growth strategy, this is called a unique selling proposition (USP) – a clear statement that describes the benefit of your product or service, how you solve your customer’s needs and what distinguishes you from the competition.
Developing this can be a powerful sales tool. The absolute best sales superpower is to be unique. If there is no comparison, then you are free to compete on providing the best value for the client.
As one of my wise marketing mentors once shared with me, “an ounce of different is worth a pound of same.”
8 – Know Your Route(s) to Market
A crucial part of every growth plan is to know and understand your route(s) to market.
An organization can consider many different sales channels as part of their growth strategy. Selling directly into their target market(s), whether it is B2B or B2C, is the most common. Other channels include partners, wholesale, retail, OEM, etc.
Knowing your route to market is a fundamental requirement in order to define effective growth strategy.
In the earlier Buyer’s Journey commandment, I shared that marketing enables sales. Ensuring that marketing and sales are in alignment, and working in concert, is crucially important no matter what channel(s) you ultimately decide to use.
9 – Build a Scalable GTM Infrastructure
The ninth commandment is about building a solid foundation for growth.
We all know that you need a strong foundation in order to construct an enduring building. It is the same for organizations.
The GTM infrastructure for the organization includes people, process, technology, and data/analytics. Growth leaders must ensure the GTM infrastructure is both capable and scalable.
In the growth mix, technology can be a force multiplier if the core GTM tech stack (website, CRM, marketing automation, social media) are integrated. The goal of every growth leader is to make sure that marketing, sales, and client success are all working together effectively.
An added bonus to tech integration is that is allows us to measure everything. The ability to track and measure key metrics allows growth leaders to build a predictable revenue model, gain clarity on marketing ROI, and ultimately make intelligent decisions on how to optimize and grow the business.
10 – Develop a Balanced Marketing Plan
In order to grow the business, it is vital to have a balanced marketing plan. A consistent cadence of outbound and inbound tactics will help drive growth.
It is worth repeating this important concept: Marketing enables sales.
Marketing is an expense. For many organizations, it is one of the largest budget line items. However, with the proper metrics and accountability in place, it should also demonstrate enough ROI to justify the cost.
Unfortunately, marketing is often viewed as a one-time event. In order to drive consistent growth, you have to commit to an ongoing go-to-market process and a long-term plan. An intelligent balance of marketing tactics, consistently executed, is always the best path forward.
Avoid spreading your marketing efforts too thinly – if you are budget challenged it is much better to do fewer things, but do them well. You can invest more in marketing as your grow.
Go Forth and Conquer
Remember, there is no silver bullet for growth.
Growth leaders can dramatically improve their odds of success by embracing the wisdom of these 10 growth commandments and making sure the right team is in place. Some may find value in engaging a CMO to guide them on their journey.
-Onward