Five Ways to Ensure Your Business is Future Driven

By Mark Roberts

In international business culture, growth is widely recognized and celebrated. With the advent of the Fortune 100 to the Forbes Global 2000, growth has been firmly entrenched as a core value; however, consistent profitable growth is never guaranteed. For instance, today's hard-charging startup can quickly become tomorrow's front-page disaster. In a volatile economy, any company's growth can quickly go pear-shaped.

It is with this unpredictability in mind that we should be posing the question: 

“is there a better way to evaluate companies with the right strategies, systems and processes to not only build but to also sustain profitable growth?”

Yes, there is! 

The answer lies in understanding the difference between a fast-growing business and a future-driven business. When a company is lauded as a rapidly growing business, the indicators used are all viewed through the lens of past economic achievements as opposed to looking at now or in the future and pinpointing the exact steps taken to drive future-growth. Identifying growing businesses can be tricky as historic revenue jumps can hide problematic activities that can impede future expansion. This means we could be recognizing and rewarding dangerous growth strategies and practices such as:

●      Growing volume with price exceptions so that the revenue can't support growth.

●      Building business by securing one enormous contract with a single entity.

●      Driving sales beyond the organization's ability to execute.

●      Buying a book-of-business and counting it toward new sales.

●      Chasing all business via diversification.

With these dangerous practices in mind here are five essential attributes of a future-driven business:

●     The business strategy is focused and responsive to the market-I once worked for a B2B company that within their market, they had a "cult-like following". The primary reason is that the organization was extraordinarily client centric. They clearly understood the voice of their customers and used that information to serve them the way they wanted to be served. A future-driven business is fully engaged in understanding the community of customers and prospects it serves. As a matter of course, this involvement may allow the company to anticipate and respond proactively to the market with new products and services that leave their competitors wondering: why didn’t we think of that?

●     Sales and marketing are aligned- Sales professionals are not always pleased with marketing. While marketing finds the salesforce ignores valuable content and campaigns. The unifier is that both sales and marketing effectiveness can be measured and held accountable. In a future-driven company, sales and marketing are two parts of the same whole. They share cross functional goals and they are both focused on how they can drive value for their customers. 

●     People, systems, and processes are developed in an environment of continuous improvement-Future-driven organizations consistently and continuously plan and build ahead of their growth curve. They embed optimization into essential programs such as client services, supply chain, and pricing. Investments are made in personnel such as training, and team members are encouraged to gain new skills. 

A future-driven business also recognizes that it needs to have a clear technology strategy for revenue generation (CRM, sales analytics, and reporting, pricing management) AND for customer service (ERP, shipping management).

Also, a future-driven organization is metric, and process obsessed and can answer revenue questions with utmost clarity.  

Who is our most profitable client? 

What is the margin on our most popular product? 

How many price exceptions / overrides do we allow and why? 

Who is responsible for defining and delivering on these key performance metrics?

●     Customer fixation-Future-driven companies are in it for the long-term. Revenue targets are aligned with strategic goals, and clients are engaged strategically at all stages of their journey. Tools are used, such as the Whale Curve, that allows salespeople and their managers to have business discussions about their customers and really dig in and report on profitability and margin. They clearly understand their cost to serve and all the levers available to drive profit improvement. These companies transform clients into evangelists and understand winning a pricing battle isn't the goal－winning the market is.

●     The company is focused on defining itself and delivering on its promise-A growth-driven business has a clear definition of its brand: what it means and for whom in the market. Simultaneously, the company needs to deliver on the brand promise to the client throughout their lifecycle.

One more thing. It is important to note that while a fast-growing business and a future-driven business will achieve regular increases in sales－a future-driven business may increase top-line revenue more slowly than a growing business. Essentially, this is because there is a cost to build infrastructure at every stage, apply rigorous measurement and possibly pivoting strategy to find the formula for success.

I’m curious, do you think there is a difference between growing your business quickly versus growing it profitably for the future? Please respond in the comments!