Achieve Stronger Growth with Greater Stability
You’ve seen those memes of big guys with skinny legs, right? Well, stop right there! Could that be you?
When you’re growing your business, especially when it’s going really well, it’s easy to be over-invested in a small number of clients and industries. And there’s a very good reason for that.
It’s all about recency. The people most likely to buy from you now are the ones who bought from you most recently, which makes them easier to sell to. (Jim Novo: Drilling Down – Turning Customer Data into Profits with a Spreadsheet)
So, thinking short term, it’s faster to win sales from current clients than from new ones, and it’s cheaper to sustain current clients than to win new ones. Long-term, though, it’s the brands that focus on market penetration and client diversification that have the highest growth (Byron Sharp: How Brands Grow).
Now, if you’re a smallish or medium-sized company you may be thinking ‘That’s all very well, mate, but I really can’t sustain any more clients right now. It’s taking all my time to keep them happy as it is.’ I hear that every day, and I’ve been there too.
But you’ve got a team behind you, right? Are they supporting new clients or just working on briefs you throw them? Have you trained them in client engagement so they can be business generators in their own right, or are they just being passive brief recipients? Even though they do a good job, do clients return to them? Do you trust them to support your company’s growth? Perhaps you’re a bit hesitant about that.
To get your Big Guy Legs on you don’t just need more clients, you need more business generators. You know this of course, but the question is how, especially as your team is less than comfortable with selling. They may perceive selling as the antithesis of professional integrity, something only suited to out and out extraverts wearing baggy suits and bad ties. They may suffer from imposter syndrome and feel vulnerable when trying to sell themselves. There are training solutions that work to turn this around. But more of that in another blog.
There’s a world of difference between a company whose turnover is brought in by one to two key individuals and a business which has all senior staff bringing in work to support themselves and others. While the former can grow, its success will always be precarious, its value uncertain and its future at risk.
