That’s a question that most of us find intriguing
because we all want to know the secret of success. Many business owners I know,
whom others might consider successful, are themselves a little nervous as they
don’t really understand why they got to where they are now. Their problem,
obviously, is that if they don't understand why they got there in the first
place; they won’t know what to do if things go wrong.
You might have noticed that more recently I have
been focusing on ambitious business owners that are seeking to rapidly grow
their business. These High Growth businesses provide us with some valuable
insights about how to be successful. A recent survey of High Growth businesses
in the USA by Hinge Marketing concluded that there were 4 things that high
growth businesses do differently from others, which contributed to their
growth.
1. They focus on delivering client’s desired
outcomes. They were not touting the firm’s qualifications or their products or
service strengths but rather what the results were of providing their product
or services and what it meant to the client. This idea of focusing on outcomes
makes them much more likely to deliver as they have their eyes on the prize.
2. They are truly customer focused; their job is to
make the client’s life easier. You won’t hear complaints about customer
attitude or how clients are making their life difficult. They see a problem
with a customer as an opportunity for them to improve. Some businesses are
actually disappointed if they don’t get negative feedback from their clients as
it doesn't give them the opportunity to further improve their business.
3. They are flexible. They recognise how much, both
prospects and clients, value flexibility and very many high growth businesses
feature flexibility in their marketing and sales material.
4. They focus on their reputation. They work very
hard at promoting and protecting their reputation and their brand.
There is a 5th thing that High Growth businesses do,
or rather and interestingly what they don’t do and that is spend
excessive amounts on marketing. Surprisingly, High Growth businesses spend
slightly less than the average business on marketing. You'd intuitively expect
that High Growth businesses (in this case growing @ 20% plus pa over 2 years)
would be spending disproportionately more. However the survey indicated that
these " High Growth " businesses spent only 4.9% of their revenues on
marketing as opposed to 5.1% for the average business.
This leads to the obvious question; how do they do
that? Whilst I have no empirical evidence I can anecdotally, at least, support
this finding. If I look at those High Growth businesses I've worked with
virtually all of them spent much less on marketing than you’d expect. Having
looked into this further it seems to me that many High Growth businesses have
accidentally locked on to something which fits the market demands better than
the competition and the clarity of their proposition has got prospects pounding
at their door.
I can think of two obvious examples; one a
construction business that is currently experiencing an 80%pa growth over this
year and forecasting similar next with no marketing spend at all. In fact they
are receiving so many enquiries that they are hard pressed to respond at
all. Looking at it for the first time you might even think that
their sales process was broken. Yet despite all of that their growth is and
continues to be phenomenal. Why, "word of mouth". They will move
heaven and earth to get things right first time. This attitude marks them out
from their competition and keeps both existing and new customers approaching
them for proposals.
The second is a services business which has landed several strategic contracts with some very high profile companies in the UK, with no
formal sales function and more startlingly having no one with any formal sales
training. Its success once again appears purely based on what it can deliver and “word of mouth” from a couple
of existing clients.
What I find interesting is that the results of this
report suggest that a business’s success has much more to do with how well they
had thought through why and how they deliver their product or service and their
value proposition and much less to do with the size of their wallet.
Exigent Consulting provides specialist services to the Small and Medium Business including Managing High Growth, Business Turnaround, and Mentoring. We help business owners improve the profit performance of their business.
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