So your company is doing OK (or maybe not so OK). But you’d really like it to take off.You have your eye set on 500% growth in the next year or two, maybe a little more, maybe a little less. That’s an aggressive goal but highly doable if you really want it. You have to be committed, be committed to the process and be committed to change. You will have to invest time and money, but the most difficult part will be taking you out of your comfort zone.

So what’s the methodology? There are four parts,
1)sales development, 2)customer loyalty development, 3) strategic business planning and 4)executive coaching.

1) Sales development. Certainly sales is the way to acquire new customers. Are your sales people effective? Do they bring in revenue and new accounts? Are their goals aligned with the company’s plan? Please don’t confuse sales training with sales development. Training is to pick up some skills which may or may not be used effectively or remembered. Development is to gain dedication, learn what motivates, be fully in the process, in addition to the skills.

2) Customer Loyalty Development. What good is all that sales effort if your customers only buy from you once? That’s money thrown away if your whole organization isn’t focused on delighting your customers and making personal connections with them. Gallup research shows that’s what it takes to get people to buy from you and refer you to others for a lifetime: personal emotional connections. This has a huge impact in reducing your sales and marketing costs.

3) Strategic Business Planning. Weaving customer loyalty throughout the organization, managing growth so you don’t grow erratically or grow yourself out of business, planning your cash flow requirements, supporting your sales team with effective marketing, taking advantage of industry developments, fine tuning your product or service, developing your organization’s competitive advantage are all necessary parts of the planning and strategic process.

4) Executive Coaching. The organization can not grow any larger than the vision, expertise and management capability of the CEO/President/Owner. So it pays to realize if you want to grow a organization, you have to first grow the leader of the organization. That’s sometimes the hardest part, getting the leader to challenge his/her own assumptions, develop an empowering management style, and get out of the way.