The Best Time to Grow Your Business: Strategies for Sustainable Growth

This will seem obvious to you, once you think about it; the best time to grow your business is when you don’t need to.

My business is in the business of growing businesses, so I often get the opportunity to discuss and hear various thoughts on the topic. The statement that I don’t hear often, but more than you might think, “We’ve got more business than we can handle. The last thing we need is new business.” Like I said, I don’t hear it often, but when I do I have to smile inside and think to myself, good luck, let me know how that one works out for you.

Having owned and run multiple small- to mid-sized businesses, I’ve often found myself reflecting on past reports and realizing: I didn’t focus enough on new business development, and now I’m paying the price. From those experiences, I’ve learned two key questions I ask myself every day:

1. What am I doing today to find new business?
2. What am I doing today to invest in preparation for future growth?

Managing Prospects

How many times over your career have you enjoyed work-in-process, newly booked business, or the biggest nemesis, 95% committed prospects, only to hear that your customer or prospect is slowing down or pausing the work? For me, far too many times to count. There are many things we struggle to control on this topic, but one thing we have total control over is the installation and management of the structures and processes that continuously identify and position new business opportunities.

Metrics that Matter in Business Growth

At COACT, my metrics are a bit easier to track than most of yours, but this might plant a seed or two.

Each week, I monitor:

• Work in process
• Value of proposals
• Number of proposals
• Average age of proposals
• Calendar-forecast closes

Our median gestation of sale is 44 days – from the time of introduction to signed agreement. Based on historical data, I know the percentage of those I introduce to COACT in March, will be clients in May. During that period, I’m focused on investments needed to support that growth.

Now, as interesting and maybe impressive as that sounds, it is very much an imperfect science. Lacking any deliberate strategy and action toward new business growth, the future of the business rests largely on the whims of the economy. When it is down, we move rapidly to smaller/faster, the painstaking activity of ‘right sizing,’ causing guilt and regret. This is often when we refocus our efforts on business growth structures and processes. Unfortunately, for some, it is too late. It is very difficult to meaningfully impact the gestation of a sale, without severely damaging margins. This makes meaningful growth much harder.

Operational Focus vs. Growth Responsibility

Some businesses struggle to balance servicing current customers while developing new opportunities. I’m a fan of the concept of everyone being involved in business growth, but I recommend that specialization exists in new business outreach, focused on developing relationships that will be strategically important to the firm in the future. Expecting operational folks to complete these responsibilities often sub-optimizes both supply and demand functions.

Supply and Demand

The reality: when market demand outstrips supply, this is a great time to think and act strategically about business growth. Think about it — raise prices, refine your offerings, and carefully choose the wins that best fit your system, and proactively upgrade your customer portfolio.

When supply is outstripping market demand, fewer new business opportunities exist. Competition to win new business starts long before submitting an estimate or proposal. Winning systems have designed and executed strategic outreach that competes for relationships long before they compete for business. Massive action is required – proactive execution, making business development and marketing outreach your competitive advantage in the market.

No different than any other high performing functions (accounting, purchasing, manufacturing, etc) within your organization, business development, marketing, and strategic growth is a daily discipline, not an as-needed activity.