Got Growth?

When it comes to professional improvement and sales improvement everyone must know their roles without losing sight of the BIG picture perspective. Keeping the BIG picture perspective in mind means never losing sight of your customer! It means never losing sight of what products you provide in the marketplace and how those products get to the marketplace for your customer’s use! It means leaders can never get so caught up in the tactical decisions that they neglect or forget the strategic decisions that they are charged with making. It means that the company needs to know how to increase sales and grow business!

Let’s start with this concept; if you lose sight of your customer and what they are demanding in the market then you have lost touch with the ability to grow the company. No amount of cost cutting, overhead reduction or size reduction is going to increase top line performance. In today’s market, new products are being introduced at light speed in order to meet customer demand. Previously, if you had weeks, months and years to introduce new product, you now have hours, days and weeks from concept to production to the customer. A lack of adjustment in this area could be the difference in the success or failure of the company. The need to innovate and differentiate has come from the customer’s constant demand for new and improved offerings in both established and new categories. It has also come from companies who are searching for the ability to grow their business during a time of economic instability. An article in Fast Company magazine summed up the situation this way: “Companies that outthink, outperform and out-innovate the competition will be the ones poised for even more rapid growth in the future.”

Next concept; you can’t execute tactically at the expense of strategic thought and process. Ownership means that you move beyond “running” your area of responsibility to treating it as if it were your business. In every company there are people who are charged with thinking tactically. They are the heartbeat of the company in many cases. Even at these levels, people must know how what they do connects to the bigger picture. The crisis is occurring with leaders who are charged with the responsibility of strategic thinking and yet they continue to believe that someone else is going to make their decisions for them. Today’s sales environment is made up of changing customers, with changing needs and requirements in changing environments. Ownership means making sense of this fast paced change and incorporating what you learn into the sales driven culture that will impact your customer. No one else is going to do it for your or on your behalf!

Finally, Growth is no accident. One of the popular commercials on television and in the papers simply says “GOT MILK?” There is a brief portion of the ad that deals with the fact that milk helps build healthy bones and bodies. If companies are to answer the growth question, they will be required to build momentum and create cultures in which people think strategically about consistently keeping their customer’s requirements clearly in focus! They will be required to remember that the top line grows the bottom line every time! GOT GROWTH?

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