Companies have been obsessed with “growth hacking” in recent times, but forcing growth like that is likely to cause more harm than good. Businesses should instead be looking at ways to achieve sustainable, long-term growth. Achieving this type of growth requires the right combination of elements and strategy, tied together with foresight.
Sustainable growth doesn’t have to take a long time to happen, however. Some factors have an almost immediate impact on the growth of the company. Thirteen entrepreneurs from Forbes Business Development Council explore the elements that will ensure sustainable business growth with a specific focus on the factors that start working almost immediately.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Value Delivery
Hand in hand with growth is the value that you offer to your client or customer. Demonstrating that value from the start of the relationship not only helps you secure future loyalty, but helps you improve your pipeline via word-of-mouth referrals. Growth has a multifaceted gear wheel attached to it that involves many aspects of nurturing new and existing relationships and defining value. – Brandon Batchelor, ReadyCloud
2. Client Satisfaction And Footprint
Growth is largely related to client satisfaction and geographical footprint. Client satisfaction can be achieved by delivering a better experience, innovating new products/services and managing employee satisfaction to allow them to be ambassadors of the brand. Geographical footprint is related to how you manage cash flow, margins and investment to expand into new territory that will lead to growth. – Charming Shah, NTT DATA
3. Customer-Centricity
A business caters to customers, consumers, patients or whomever benefits from the output. The best way for sustainable growth and success of any relevant strategy is to focus continuously on customer problem-solving or feedback and improving the service to them and their successful experience with what you offer them. This builds continuous consumption, trust, value and growth! – Joseph Antoun, L-Nutra Inc
4. Customer Needs Knowledge
Be conscious of the fact that returning customers dictate sustainability and new customers dictate growth. Analytics is such a key factor for my brand. Knowing our customers needs is key. To date, our biggest strategy is customer interaction and internal CRM. Reaching our customers directly and sending the message via a sale or with information is the quickest and surest form of ROI. – Jeff Riman, King Kanine
5. Clear Articulation Of Goals
Business leaders clearly articulating quantified business objectives and cascading increasingly granular goals to successive levels of subordinates create a framework that aligns decisions and actions to the achievement of the top level business objectives. Decisions and actions align because individuals can “see” and be measured against the goal components for which they are responsible. – Nathan Ives, DataGlance, Inc.
6. An Outside-In Look
Most CEOs and executives spend their time looking at the world from where they sit—an inside-out look. To achieve sustained growth in the marketplace, they need to have an outside-in look. First, they need to understand the world they operate in. Second, they should have realistic recognition of the value their company provides or can provide and then develop strategies that link the two effectively. – Atul Minocha, Chief Outsiders
7. Team Buy-In
Growth strategies can be invigorating or debilitating depending on context and leadership. The worst mistake a leader can make is to lose sight of the importance of buy-in. If your team does not believe in the mantra of growth, all strategic elements will fall flat. Ignite passion toward a growth goal by making meaning and illustrating how each member contributes to the goal. – Melanie Hicks, MGT of America
8. Ownership
Ownership is the best way to create an immediate impact. When reps and frontline managers feel like an idea, project or initiative is based on their thoughts or influenced by their input, they are much more likely to feel ownership. Owners don’t like to see their ideas get off to a slow start or worse, fail. – Mark Kosoglow, Outreach
9. Openness To New Ideas
Openness to new ideas is critical to driving growth. Achieving this openness requires structural mechanisms to enable ideas to flow to decision makers from anywhere within the organization. You also need a culture that embraces innovation across all levels. These elements are more important than ever today as businesses redefine how they respond to constantly evolving requirements. – Jorge Rodriguez, Claro Enterprise Solutions
10. Knowledge Sharing
Collaboration increases knowledge sharing. Having a teamwork environment will encourage others to share their success and ideas. There is room for everyone to be successful at a company. – Sheila Halvorson, Harvest Revenue Group LLC
11. Messaging Consistency
Business leaders must ensure messaging consistency. This means ensuring every customer-facing employee is on message, on brand and demonstrating value—be it related to company and product differentiation or technical skill. A maniacal focus on assessing, building and reinforcing this right mix of knowledge and soft and hard skills will help companies grow no matter the market or macroeconomic climate. – Gopkiran Rao, MindTickle
12. People And Purpose Connections
One factor that makes a growth strategy work immediately is helping everyone understand how their work contributes to the bigger picture. When people feel that their work matters, they’re more invested in it. When you get the buy-in of the people contributing to the greater vision, your growth strategy will see immediate results. If you want to grow for real, show people their impact! – Alexander Divinsky, RMG Media
13. Collaboration And Innovation
Companies need to adapt to their changing environments while encouraging innovation through collaboration. Every company has great talent, so create an environment to allow this to blossom. Companies need to encourage think tanks and smaller counsels to address challenges and potential future obstacles. Trust your people first and pivot to adapt to your changing environments. – Donald O’Sullivan, PegaSystems
