Navigating Your Business Growth with Expert Guidance

Discover the Secrets to Growth with Fractional COOs and Strategic Business Solutions

As businesses expand, owners frequently encounter growing pains and unforeseen challenges—financial intricacies and strategic decisions that can be overwhelming. Leveraging his expertise as a fractional COO, Dan Smits unveils the common hurdles experienced during growth phases and explores solutions to help you concentrate on what truly matters: your business. Whether you’re a new business owner or aiming to focus on the core of your trade, tune in to this episode of GrowthPoint Partnership for valuable insights.

What You’ll Learn

Growth Point Partnership presents, Partners in Growth podcast. I’m Dan Smits, the founder and CEO of Growth Point Partnership, and I’m your host today. With 25 years of owning and operating four businesses, being involved with two acquisitions within those businesses and successfully exiting two businesses, we know what drives growth and kills growth.

Let’s dive into customizing your growth strategy, which will help you build enterprise value and puts you in the driver’s seat for whatever obstacles come your way. And when you’re ready to exit your business, you’re gonna exit with a financial gain. We are entrepreneurs that work with you hands-on, leveraging our experience to provide you insights into the challenges and hard work involved in starting and growing businesses. It’s all about determination and grit. Today we’ll dive into developing a growth, sales, and marketing strategy that takes your business to the next level. So who’s on your team? Who are the people in your organization that are responsible for growth, sales, and marketing, which is typically the sales team, the leadership team, maybe even a CFO within your organization or the financial person. Build that team and together using a thought-out plan like I’m going to describe to you. Will help you to work through the different components that get you to be competitive within your market. So grab your notepad because we’ll get some thought-provoking questions and criteria to consider.

So number one, building a performance driven culture. It’s very important in order to have the right people on the bus and know how to execute through your plan. So how well does your business foster a performance driven culture? So think about this from a context of planning and these are some questions that your team can introduce and then really work together to develop through your answers. So are your goals clear? Are they very concise of who you are as an organization? Do you have the data to make decisions within your organization? And do you have an accountability plan relating to dashboards and different information that helps you to be able to make decisions based on data? And then a relentless focus on customer needs. So what does the customer need out there? What are your current customers explaining to you that is the key component of why they do business with your organization? And then in our quest for business excellence, we highlight the importance of a performance driven culture. The best businesses invest in and support efforts to attract, retain and grow customer base and salespeople and people helping to develop the overall products.

So number two, we’re going to really dive into documenting your growth strategy. So that team always has a person that takes the notes that’s responsible for putting the documentation together so it all makes sense for all parties involved and other people that might not be in this particular planning session. How well is the growth strategy documented describing your business growth plans for the next three years? So look out three to five years depending on your stage of business and really having in mind of what that sales growth looks like each year and what are you gonna have to put together for a plan in order to accomplish that growth. If you’re looking to grow 25% every year, it needs to be a more robust plan. And it’s essential to have specifics grounded in the data to really help you towards your path to success.

And then, really number three is critical and that’s the sales and marketing mastery. So those people that are executing on the sales and marketing plan is where the rubber meets the road, right? So those people delivering it, talking to your customers, your structure of your sales team, what does that look like? Who’s responsible for going out there hunting? Who’s responsible for killing? You know, closing the deal? Who’s responsible for account management within your organization? A lot of organizations rely on that account manager to really nurture and get more business, but there’s always a person that’s out there hunting and then a closer, which a lot of times a closer is part of the ownership team – typically doesn’t have to be. This includes, this plan includes the messaging, what channels you’re gonna go after, the measurement of effectiveness back to those dashboards. A robust plan should reach your target customers, convey the right message, and measure its success.

Number four is showcasing your excellence. So let’s talk about marketing communications and sales tools. How well do you market your materials and sales tools or showcase those sales tools to be able to show them how they’re going to benefit from working with your organization. So it’s really a differentiation of working with you versus other organizations. Your ability to stand out is critical. Effective marketing materials can make all the difference because it really helps that person to guide them through the process.

And then number five. Leveraging customer knowledge. So deep customer knowledge is critical point to be able to help businesses leverage their deep understanding influence of products and the service offerings and the strategy. So really having that, that who are your customers, how are they benefiting and understanding what your customers’ needs are, their pain points is paramount to your success. So pain-based selling, I’ve found to be very, very effective over the years.

And then number six, defining your target market. So moving forward, considering your clear target market. How clearly is your target market described? Including size, the relevant areas that you’re going to focus on, demonstrating a focus, understanding of potential customers is key, understanding market trends and growth trajectories can really help you guide your sales and marketing decisions effectively.

Number seven, navigating the competitive landscape. The competitive landscape, it’s vital to assess your competition effectively. How well has your business analyzed the competitive landscape, including your competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, differentiation strategies. Your unique value proposition should be clearly shown in your sales process and in your brochures on your website, etc. So regularly collecting and discussing competitor information is vital for staying ahead of your competition. So really having an open forum that when you get this plan established, you start answering these questions and you’re having, you know, weekly, monthly meetings that really dive into where are you at and what are the things that we need to what are the things that we need to really uncover to drive performance-driven culture? A well-documented strategy, effective sales, and marketing plan, compelling marketing material, deep customer knowledge, a clear target market, and a strong grasp of the competitive landscape are critical components for success in the business world.

Join us again next time on Partners for Growth as we continue to work through the growth journey to uncover secrets of business excellence. If you found today’s episode to be helpful, please consider subscribing and leaving a review. Also, as we keep striving for excellence in business endeavors, we would really appreciate ideas and things you as a listener want us to uncover. Thank you for tuning in. And again, my name is Dan Smits with Growth Point Partnership. This is Partners in Growth podcast. And our website is Growth Point Partnership.com

Thank you and have a great day.