If you hired a great “business growth” coach, she’d probably have you follow the same plan as a golf or football coach: 1) objectively assess your current capabilities, 2) develop a comprehensive improvement plan, and 3) track your progress in improving these capabilities.
Why not follow this same approach for building your organic growth capabilities? Step 1 can be a free diagnostic of your business’s growth capabilities at www.b2bgrowthdiagnostic.com, which benchmarks your business against others on 24 growth drivers. You can then run this free diagnostic annually. The key word here is capabilities: Too many leaders fixate only on results, forgetting that capabilities drive results.
More in 2-minute video, Build your growth capabilities
Do you want serendipitous growth each year… or superior, sustainable organic growth you can count on year after year? For the latter, you’ll need improved capabilities—training, methods and tools—across your organization in many areas. We’ve identified 24 of these “growth drivers” in our research, What Drives B2B Organic Growth. You can see your percentile benchmark rank against others on all 24 with our free B2B Growth Diagnostic. It’s the first step on the road from serendipity to sustainability.
More in article, Is it time for a growth capability diagnostic assessment?
If you’re a business leader, you obviously can’t personally take all the training your people take… you’re simply too busy. But there are times where you should sit elbow-to-elbow learning what the rank and file learn. This is true if a) most of the organization is learning this topic, b) the learning applies to your responsibility, e.g. organic growth, or c) your lack of understanding could lead to errors of omission or commission on your part. Remember, there are countless ways we can display our ignorance by what we say and do.
See video on B2B innovation training at www.NPBtraining.com.
We call our bosses “leaders” out of respect for their organizational position. But have they learned how to drive B2B organic growth? In fairness, we provide training to the rank and file so they can develop new skills… but we expect our busy leaders will somehow “pick up” what’s needed. We’ve compiled 30 lessons for business leaders in the e- book, Leader’s Guide to B2B Organic Growth. You can even sign up to receive a 2-minute weekly video lesson for 30 weeks… an executive short-course in leading growth.
More in article, B2B Organic Growth: 8 top lessons for leaders
In our research, B2B professionals rated a strong value proposition as the #1 most important driver of profitable, sustainable organic growth. But what makes it strong? Certainly not the supplier’s opinion. A value proposition is only strong if it addresses outcome(s) important and unsatisfied to the customer. This is the part that most B2B new-product teams bungle. They guess, hope, or hypothesize which outcomes customers want. Big mistake. Without unbiased, unfiltered data, most teams are led astray by their confirmation bias.
More in video, Leader’s Guide to B2B Organic Growth series, Video Lesson #19
I hear this all the time: “We just finished trimming our costs, and now it’s time to grow.” Another variation: “Our last CEO focused on operational efficiency, but our new CEO wants growth.” This is nuts. If you run a business, B2B organic growth isn’t an initiative. It’s your job. All the time. Profitable, sustainable organic growth is the only way to ensure your company’s value keeps rising and your employees can count on stable employment. Who wins a race by wandering on and off the track?
More in article, B2B Organic Growth: Moving to earned growth
