Growth Strategies

Growth Strategy Development

The Strategy Development process is a structured approach to translating the growth goals of your business into a series of action plans with accountability, beginning with understanding the competitive landscape.  MMTC helps you:

• Evaluate current Sales and Marketing activities against best practices
• Identify the gap between where the company is, and the desired future state
• Envision and evaluate potential strategies to bridge a revenue/profit gap
• Establish outcomes that can be measured
• Use available research to aid decision making and guide resource allocations
• Engage employees in the realization of the vision and selected strategies

Your company works with a Growth Coach and researchers to address key areas of strategy development, including:

• Market intelligence – identify the potential best markets to achieve growth
• Differentiators/Competitive analysis – what makes your company different
• Customer analysis – develop a best customer profile for proactive efforts
• Challenges and opportunities –  relevant external or internal success factors

Growth Roadmaps

The outcome of the strategy development process identifies the best paths to growth for your company given the situation, challenges and resources.

• Have you maximized growth potential from your current customer base?
• Does your company have a repeatable process to generate new leads in your current market or new markets?
• Does your company know how to successfully diversify into new markets?
• Do salespeople have the collateral tools and process skills to be successful?
• Can potential new customers find your website on search engines? What do they find? Is it a brochure, or integrated into the sales process?
• What about developing new products and services? Do you have a collaborative culture and the innovation skills for future success?
• Can operations support a growth strategy, or are improvements first needed in profitably handling low volume/high mix orders, on-time shipping, or quality certifications?

Choosing your company’s growth roadmap depends on your specific  market opportunities and best return on investment.  It may depend on whether you are a job shop or manufacturer of finished goods. It will also depend on the capabilities of your people and culture.  These should all be assessed as part of your company’s strategy development. 

Customer Cultivation

For companies who experience strong margins in current markets or recently entered a new market, cultivating current markets is a likely best strategy for growth.  Cultivation involves actions like –

• Maximizing sales from current customers
• Surveying customers to identify opportunities for improvement and new ideas
• Developing best practice metrics for customer score cards

Lead Generation

For companies seeking near term growth with an opportunity to increase sales in current markets, a focus on lead generation is the fastest way to jumpstart a solid sales pipeline. Lead generation features:

• Finding new leads similar to current “best” customer profiles
• Developing a message that gets you noticed and campaigns that communicate your company’s unique solution to address target customer challenges
• Maximizing website traffic to drive qualified leads and improve sales conversion rates

Diversification

For companies in slow growth markets with many competitors, it’s likely margins are declining. Diversification into new markets is a wise choice sooner, rather than later. Diversification may take a number of directions, such as –

• Identifying the best growth markets given a company’s core competencies
• Creating new market awareness—lead generation, campaigns, website actions
• Exporting as a viable means to long-term growth in rapidly-expanding markets

Expansion and Innovation

Companies seeking growth through expansion or innovation of products and services often follow a different path than those who pursue cultivation or diversification.  Involvement extends beyond the sales and marketing team.  This company-wide pursuit includes –

• A repeatable process for generating new ideas to grow the business
• Creating culture that embraces and rewards successful collaboration
• Best practices and metrics for new product launch

Website Effectiveness

Businesses, whether big or small, are making their presence felt on the Internet with a website. Adopting strategic marketing techniques for added value and to generate more business leads makes good business sense.

• Website Evaluation Report—Learn how your website can be search engine optimized
• Website Tune-Up—Implement search engine optimization or minor website upgrades
• Website Redesign—Develop a new site to support new marketing messages or branding

 For more information on MMTC's Growth Strategies program, contact us at 888-414-6682 or via email at inquiry@mmtc.org.