Accelerating Growth, Part II: Looking Beyond Sales and Marketing For Growth

In a previous article, I talked about where most companies start when they need to increase company growth rate, with the usual suspects being:

– Sales leadership – Sales team members
– Marketing mix
– Sales pipeline and lead quality
– CRM system

Investigating how the above work and then making systematic improvements in all five almost always leads to faster growth.

However, here are several other key factors to keep an eye on that can provide additional growth enhancement and insulation from declines during downturns.

1) Customer Experience – Are you creating positive experiences for customers at every stage of interaction, including post sale?

2) Voice of Customer – Are customers likely to recommend you to others?  Have you done an informal or formal survey to confirm?

3) Customer Relationship – Customers usually have an uncanny sense for the worth of their suppliers. This usually develops in two phases starting first with a purchase and followed by a post-sale relationship where customers periodically retest value. They will purchase again as a vote of confidence or may ask for extra help, service, or advice. Making customers feel like your value transcends the initial sale to cover whatever needs they have can pay huge dividends.

4) Role of Service – Is your customer service helping or hurting customer loyalty? In most companies, post-sale service is usually short suited when it comes to budgeting resources to ensure success.

5) Quality – How do your customers measure “quality”? Be sure to carefully watch your top two quality metrics (the ones your customers care about).

6) Customer Retention –Know why customers choose to leave you. Include “retention” on your Company Leadership agenda at a minimum each quarter.

7) Lifetime Value – Customers likely have some measure of the value you provide over the long haul. Be sure you know how a few of your customers do this and be attentive to clues about their view on lifetime value.

8) Reasons to Call – Because the initial point of customer interest is so critical to landing new business, the sales team should have at least 5 reasons to call on a prospect that will generate immediate curiosity! Usually, 2-3 of these reasons are the same each year, e.g. a reminder that it’s time to repurchase or checking if any needs or requests for bids are coming up. But having a refreshed set of reasons that are topical and “in the moment” – like a new product announcement – helps as well and can yield a disproportionately high return on investment!

9) Leadership Relationships with Key Customers – Could company executive leaders be doing more to nurture your most valuable customer relationships?

What do you think of this list. Did I miss any?