Scale Your Business Better: The GROWTH Stage

The goal of this stage is to be ready to scale and build a much bigger business. In this stage, your focus is on building a scalable infrastructure to improve your selling as well as how you deliver the products and services that you offer--customer experience.

You'll be focused on questions like:

• How can I make this more efficient?
• Is there a way that could be easier for me to do this?
• How can I make fewer sacrifices (money, time, or energy) to complete this task?

Efficiency may sound obvious, but it’s often overlooked. Making money doesn’t need to be difficult when you find the right niche and get the basics right.

Marketing and Sales During This Stage

You’re done chasing leads, finally. Marketing and sales align and start working toward the same goals, with the same numbers and metrics. They target and sell to the relevant markets that are most likely to buy. Growth has become more efficient by attracting clients that are a better fit and offer a higher contract value. The metrics you’ll focus on are customer lifetime value (CLV) and net revenue retention (NRR) as you expand your offerings into new categories or create new solutions.

Now you get to focus on refining your client experience. You’ll start taking the data and lessons that you’ve learned from marketing and sales in the HUSTLE stage and giving it to client account reps so they can figure out what’s working and what isn’t. You’ll be focusing on building repeatable processes because customized solutions are expensive and not scalable. Remember, it is possible to create the perception of customized solutions so your clients can feel like they are getting a solution just for them.

Your client data should be as clean as possible, so you know what is and isn’t working, and that your systems are working the way they are supposed to. You may continue to have poor retention because of the variety of clients that have already been acquired, which is ok. This is why measuring performance by segment is critical to knowing which customers to go after and which to abandon are important.

Operations During This Stage

Operations will be focused on establishing systems and implementing your tech stack so your entire client-facing team can have a single source of reliable data and a common language around it. They will continue to build out the CRM and CMS, as well as billing automation. Operations metrics for this phase include engagement, pipeline coverage, average sales, and efficiency metrics like the magic number and customer acquisition cost.

Executive Leadership During This Stage

If organic growth finances can’t sustain your growth model, you may need to explore professional funding. Over 90 percent of first-to-market companies fail to competitors who are waiting for you to prove your idea is profitable at your own expense financially and emotionally. Make sure you have the funding you need or are at least prepared to go get it.

Why don’t companies get beyond this stage:

• You’ve continued to focus on a single product because you have a weak vision
• You’ve underinvested in the distribution required for future revenue growth
• You have only one way to hit your number, and there’s a lack of predictability
• Your second or third products are really just features of the first, which is a sign of a weak product strategy
• Your second or third products aren’t taking flight (but should be) due to poor incentive structures or enablement across your revenue teams.
• You’re trying to compete on multiple fronts while dominating none
• Everyone is working, but no one is winning: a clear lack of executive alignment.
• Teams don’t understand their role in executing the strategy, and they’re ill-equipped to say no to anything
  

Some companies get to this stage and never leave. But staying can expose your business to the risk of being disrupted or commoditized—and the corresponding decrease in average deal size. You’ll either transform and grow or stay and get stuck. Once you have an offering that clients believe in, are willing to pay for, and renew their service with you, you’re ready for the next stage. Transitioning to a new stage doesn’t mean you abandon everything that came before, instead, we’ll build upon it.

Omicle delivers brand clarity, marketing strategy, and operational efficiency to prepare leaders to scale their business. If you are ready to scale your business, contact us today to get started.