Growing your business – what got you here, won’t get you there!

Growth is a key ambition for nearly every business, but actually putting a coherent growth plan into action can be a challenge for most business leaders. How do you structure your Sales & Marketing efforts to give your business the best possible chance of realising your growth ambitions?  

Most of the businesses we work with have been extremely successful in growing their business to-date. However, there is a tendency to grow to a certain size and ‘get stuck’. The wave of growth that they’ve experienced up until now can be difficult to maintain, as the business requires a larger pipeline to sustain this new size. This often causes a capacity crunch – as in many instances it is still the senior leadership who have been responsible for the growth of the business – and now their time is increasingly consumed with the day-to- day running of their growing organisation. Often, this means that the business needs to bring in new skills, or up-skill the existing team, in order to develop a structured approach to Sales & Marketing to drive the company’s growth ambitions. As the saying goes ‘What got you here won’t get you there’. 

The starting point is to take a close look at your existing Sales & Marketing activities.   What skills do you have within the business, what activities are being carried out and what are these delivering?   Undertaking a structured assessment of your current Sales & Marketing tasks allows you to identify what you are missing and whether the appropriate skills are in place to realise your growth ambitions.  

It is also important to think about your Sales & Marketing strategy itself. Often, this isn’t actually aligned with business objectives. Sometimes this happens because those objectives haven’t been clearly defined, or they’re not clearly understood by all stakeholders. Frequently we see these vital activities happen organically, in an unstructured way, and this is why businesses don’t achieve the results they expect or want.

Another important step is to ensure you are clear on what it is your business actually does. While this may seem like a given, it is surprising how many businesses do not clearly understand what problems they solve for their clients. Ultimately, without a crystal-clear understanding of these ‘pain points’, you can’t target your Sales & Marketing efforts in a focused manner. This leads to a highly-inefficient ‘scatter-gun’ approach to Sales & Marketing.  

Often the challenge for business leaders can be finding the time and space to think about these things while continuing to handle the day-to-day of running of their business. An independent and objective set of eyes can look dispassionately at a company’s existing Sales and Marketing strategies, plans and activities and advise on the best courses of action to achieve their growth ambitions.  

 Once you understand where you are in terms of your existing Sales & Marketing structure (routines/processes/behaviours/skills), and you have a clear understanding of what problems you solve for your customers and why they buy from you, you are well-placed to put in place a growth strategy that delivers for your business.

 At 3SIXTY, we work with businesses at every stage – helping organisations get clarity on what they already have in terms of Sales & Marketing, the skills they are missing, what it is their business actually does and why clients buy. As experienced Sales & Marketing practitioners, we can support your existing people develop their skills and help to put in place those  ‘building blocks’ to create a fit-for-purpose Sales & Marketing structure to support your company’s growth ambitions. Get in touch to find out more about how we can help your business accelerate its growth ambitions.