Take Stock Before Developing Your Business Growth Strategy

Friday 15 May, 2009

by Jenny Stilwell

Use these key questions to help take stock of where your business needs to focus its growth efforts.

1. Which product or service lines are most profitable and make the greatest contribution to the business?
   
2. Do we need to change the mix of our product / service portfolio in any way? When assessing products, think about factors like length of sales cycle, volume of sales, profitability, how easy is it to sell products, repeat sales, support revenue and costs, pricing, cross-sell and up-sell compatibility, etc.
   
3. Do we acknowledge and nurture our best customers?
   
4. What will drive our business growth strategy this year? Will growth be from our core business and customers, or from somewhere new? Where did it come from last year, and was it enough?
   
5. Will we be able to fund our business growth strategy? What options do we have?
   
6. Where is the biggest weakness in the business? What needs to be done to address it?
   
7. What do we need to do differently this year to achieve our goals?
   
8. Do we have the right systems and infrastructure in place to support our goals and priorities?
   
9. Do we know what the key measurements are to assess the overall progress and performance of the business, and can we report on that?
   
10. What will be the significant milestones that we will focus on this year to move our business forward?
    
11. Are we doing the same things and expecting different results? Is there anything we could be doing differently this year to make quantum changes to our business growth strategy?
    
12. Do we have the right team? Do we have resource gaps?
    
13. What changes could I make (as the CEO) in what I do, to improve the performance of the business?

Finally, after answering these questions, ask where your priorities lie for this financial year?  The milestones you listed in question 10 are your priorities, and the answers you provided to the other questions will tell you what needs to happen to achieve those milestones.
List your priorities and the actions required to follow through. Put a completion date next to each, and make it challenging but realistic.
Spend some time on this exercise as the answers will reveal where you need to focus. There will be some recurring answers, which reiterate exactly what the priorities are for you this year.
Track your priorities weekly and monthly to make sure you stay focused on the most important things to progress your business.

Source:ceoonline.com