Unleashing the Power of Strategic Growth
Revolutionize Your Business with 6 Proven Steps
Contrary to popular belief, explosive growth doesn’t always require massive overhauls or combustive actions. In reality, business growth strategies thrive on incremental improvements in specific areas where the company lacks. As you embark on expanding your business, you will explore a multitude of growth strategies, but there are fundamental principles that underpin them all.
Demystifying Growth Strategies
A growth strategy is a well-crafted plan that businesses adopt to gain a significant market share. Typically, it involves long-term vision and may sometimes necessitate sacrificing short-term profitability. Certain growth strategies require redirecting funds from regular operations to explore new avenues, which may not yield immediate returns. However, not all growth strategies come with formidable risks.
Embracing Market Penetration
Market penetration strategy revolves around maximizing the utilization of your existing product or offering within your current market. Since it doesn’t involve venturing into new markets or developing new products, this strategy boasts the lowest level of risk. Achieving market penetration can be accomplished through strategic tactics such as increasing marketing investments, implementing price adjustments, or bundling products.
Unlocking New Horizons through Market Expansion
Market expansion is a strategic move where a business introduces its current product or offering into a new market. This strategy is often pursued when growth opportunities within the current market become limited. Eventually, most businesses need to explore new markets to overcome revenue limitations caused by relying solely on existing ones.
The Power of Enhancing Products
Product development strategy entails allocating resources towards improving existing products. This growth strategy is fueled by constant and strategic innovation, aimed at providing unparalleled value to customers. Businesses must continuously find new ways to meet customer needs, develop cutting-edge technology that is superior, faster, and more affordable, or risk falling behind the competition.
Embracing the Challenge of Diversification
Diversification strategy carries inherent risks but offers promising rewards. It involves a company’s decision to create an entirely new product, such as a dog food company expanding into manufacturing leashes or a paper company entering the printer market. When entering related markets, it’s termed as horizontal diversification, while entering unrelated markets, like an auto manufacturer venturing into the telecoms industry, is known as conglomerate diversification.
The Imperative of a Growth Strategy
As a business owner, countless demands vie for your attention at any given moment. Crafting a growth strategy is the key to channeling your energy towards what truly matters: driving revenue and acquiring new customers. Constant optimization and maximization, known as Force #6 of Tony’s 7 Forces of Business Mastery, involve revisiting the core processes of your business and identifying obstacles to growth. From there, you can devise a comprehensive plan.
A growth strategy also enables you to rally your team around a shared vision. When you provide a clear direction for your company, guiding its energy towards a specific outcome, the potential for organic yet explosive growth becomes astonishing.
Consider the remarkable journey of serial entrepreneur Laurence Hallier. In the 2000s, he spearheaded the development and delivery of over $1 billion worth of real estate projects. Subsequently, he founded Show Media, the leading provider of digital interactive advertising screens in taxicabs. Show Media’s exponential growth has earned it a spot on the Inc. 500 Fastest Growing Companies in America three times.
How did Laurence achieve such remarkable success? Undoubtedly, he possesses a profound understanding of leveraging business growth strategies. His multiple attendances at Tony Robbins’ Business Mastery have equipped him with diverse insights and actionable strategies for innovating business models. Listen to Laurence as he shares the impact of this transformative event:
Six Steps Towards Crafting Business Growth Strategies
What does Laurence know that sets him apart? To create and implement a successful growth strategy, it is crucial to follow these six indispensable steps.
Master your business growth potential
As marketing expert Jay Abraham has pointed out, business owners often place unnecessary limitations on their companies’ potential, which hinders their ability to achieve explosive growth. These limiting beliefs are typically built on the foundation of past failures, but they don’t have to define your future. To develop a growth mindset and overcome those limiting beliefs, Jay recommends a combination of mindfulness techniques, such as meditation and neurofeedback, and exercise, which will help to calm your mind and build a strong foundation for your growth journey.
Inspire and Lead
Leadership is critical to achieving explosive growth, especially when it comes to inspiring and leading others. The most successful leaders are able to articulate their vision with passion and clarity, and they set an example by living that vision every day. They develop a game plan that leverages their own strengths and skills while analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the competition. By preparing for “the game,” they’re able to execute their strategy with precision and achieve the desired outcomes. The key is to stay focused, committed, and always be learning.
In addition to having a winning mindset, successful leaders also have a mission or purpose that’s larger than themselves. They communicate their vision with passion and set an example by living their purpose every day. Because at its core, a growth strategy is a vision for your company’s future, and stepping into that winning mindset – for yourself and for your team – is essential when trying to achieve explosive growth.
Choose the right growth strategy
Choosing the right growth strategy for your business is crucial to achieving explosive growth. There are four main growth strategies: market penetration, market expansion, product development, and diversification. These strategies are typically considered in that order, as they increase in risk and investment. For small businesses, it’s best to start with the lowest risk strategy and work up to high-risk, high-investment strategies like diversification.
To choose the right growth strategy, start by defining your short- and long-term goals. Make them specific and achievable, such as launching three new products this year or increasing sales by 20%. Then, categorize each goal into one of the four growth strategies and prioritize them according to which would help you achieve the most explosive growth in market share. This will help you focus your energy on the strategies that will have the greatest impact on your growth journey.
Nurture a productive work culture
In high-performance organizations, successful innovators thrive due to the convergence of various crucial elements. Cultivating a culture of innovation, establishing efficient business processes, reinforcing strong company values, and fostering team competency and behavior all harmonize within the world’s leading companies. Creating a happy and fulfilling work environment is paramount to instilling the right mindset for explosive growth. When employees are content and motivated, they possess the drive and passion necessary to execute your growth strategy effectively.
Agility is also a critical factor. To become an organization that constantly evolves, flexibility must permeate all levels. Striking a balance between deliberate scaling and geometric growth is the hallmark of a thriving business. While explosive growth can revolutionize your company, deliberately propelling your brand forward through carefully planned and repeatable steps leads to greater long-term success.
Evaluate and Enhance
Opportunities for optimization exist in nearly every facet of your business, from lead generation and sales to conversions and offer refinement. However, how can you determine if your growth strategy is yielding results? The answer lies in measurement. You cannot effectively manage what you do not measure. Identify measurable indicators of success and meticulously document your processes, then analyze the outcomes.
During this phase, Jay recommends evaluating your team members as well. He has devised the Performance Enhancement Quotient (PEQ), a methodology that extracts best practices from your top-performing individuals, quantifies them, and imparts them to others in the department. Research suggests that, in most companies, 20% of employees deliver 80% of the results. By leveraging the PEQ, you can significantly enhance the performance of everyone in the company, thereby fostering an improved company culture where recognition and growth extend beyond just the top performers.
Learn from your Journey
Embrace the lessons and insights gained from your experiences and understand that obstacles often conceal hidden opportunities. Failure is a natural part of any endeavor, be it a championship game or a business venture. Instead of fearing failure, evaluate both your triumphs and setbacks, and mentally prepare yourself to forge a new growth strategy.
- In moments of defeat, how will you persist and push your practices forward?
- In times of victory, what were the contributing factors that led to your success?
- Reflect on the key decisions you made, acknowledging both positive and negative outcomes.
- How will you leverage your strengths and build upon your weaknesses?
A dynamic company enables you to learn from your mistakes and make adjustments that seamlessly align with your geometric growth. In the past, many leaders believed that drastic pivots were necessary to overcome formidable obstacles. However, drastic measures like massive layoffs or radical changes to business models often resulted in failure rather than successful growth strategies. While acknowledging that change is inevitable, Jay advocates for building cross-functional teams and adopting measures that promote flexibility. This allows you to adapt to economic shifts and customer demands without completely overhauling your business growth strategies.