A business will not succeed or fail based on the information provided in a growth plan, but a plan can help a business idea become successful through focused planning and forethought.
Hunt for growth? The pivotal role that most influences sales results
For companies focused on growth, one of the biggest "perceived" opportunities is to make sales more productive through higher efficiencies. As a leader driving growth, this only provides a fraction of your potential revenue increase. Sales efficiency, if executed well, serves to get your Business Developers or Advisors in front of the correct client [...]
Digital disruption: Do you really know what your customers want?
It’s been four years since Deloitte published its landmark study, Digital disruption: Short fuse, big bang?, looking at the impact of digital innovation across all industries, and predicting how much change could be expected in the years to come. Since this time, digital disruption has of course become commonplace. Every single industry faces digital [...]
4 critical questions to kick-start your Social Media strategy
A decade ago, hardly anyone booked travel or did their banking online. In the rapidly emerging Digital world, this is the preferred method of doing business for an increasing number of existing and new clients. Conversion from a casual online inquiry to a closed sale remains low in an online world - typically around 3%. [...]
3 easy steps to improve your sales and strategy alignment
Are you missing opportunities that you simply did not see before it was too late? The failure to link strategic intent with sales actions, leads to wasting efforts on the wrong opportunities or moving too late into new markets. How do you get the best outcome from completing your AlignDiagnostic survey? Here are 3 steps to validate and improve your situation: Step 1: Review [...]
4 Trends that Your Business Cannot Ignore
The continued fallout from the economic crisis has created uncertainty and undermined trust. Clients react to this new uncertainty with different behaviours. As you develop your strategy for growth, here are four trends, you cannot afford to ignore: Clients are more demanding, Clients are more transactional, Clients will pay a premium, Smartphones are disrupting [...]
It may not be sexy, but it works: How to ensure critical things get done on time!
“All of us were excited about our newly developed growth plan. That said, somehow we neglected to clarify specifically who is responsible for doing what by when.” Studies tell us that 60-70% of business failures are due, not to a bad strategy, but due to bad execution. If we know this to be true, [...]
Everyone has a plan ‘till they get punched in the mouth
At the end of May each year, venture capitalist Mary Meeker delivers something of a treatise on digital disruption. Year after year, her highly lauded Internet Trends Report serves as a warning siren to business leaders: keep up with the scale and pace of digital transformation, or suffer the consequences. Digital disruption is unavoidable And [...]
How will your business compete in the Digital Age?
Digitisation changes competitive advantage because it changes market definition. Digital disruption is breaking down barriers to entry for companies in their existing markets but also into new ones as well. Companies can begin to think about this by imagining what a competitor might do to disrupt their market. What is competitive advantage? Value is [...]
Digital disruption: Why SMEs are breaking up with their accountants – and what you can do about it
I had coffee earlier this week with an old friend who’s the founder of a fast growing boutique PR company. She told me that she’d recently “broken up” with her accountant who she’d been with for about twelve years. She used that exact term “broken up”. For her, the relationship with her accountant was [...]
Why take control of your sales and strategy alignment?
Selling is your biggest expense. It can’t be upgraded nor expanded overnight. We also know that growth strategies fail because of poor execution. Your front line team (eg sales) is generally the key failure point. As you execute your growth strategy, it is vital to manage scarce sales resources. You can maximise success by concentrating [...]