Learn How You Achieve Trifecta Growth
Establishing Your Business's Foundation
Long before the 2020 pandemic, a sampling of sources such as the Business Roundtable reported C-level optimism dropping for most of 2019 and parts of 2018.
The irony is that most C-level players today weren’t around with the responsibilities to address the 2007-2008 recession’s challenges or an event such as 9/11. So many will not be prepared for similar events today until all signs are unmistakable, as we observed with the pandemic.
We’ve discussed the premise of establishing your business’ revenue growth management (RGM) approach on this website. An essential part of this approach is to include a process to prepare for the worst.
bEffective can lead your business to create a unique strategy understood and accepted by everyone. We help you strengthen this strategy with candid dialogue beyond the C suite. This strategy will clearly define roles and responsibilities, thus appropriately executing with or without the C suite daily direction. Executing it will necessitate bold and decisive action and visible leadership. Get further insights by opting into our newsletter.
Preparing Your Business for Economic Headwind
What is your comfort level with your business’ adaptability?
- Do you miss your top-line revenue objectives? 96% of CEOs believe it’s vital to have a granular, realistic understanding of where revenue will come from — but 69% rated their organization below average at this capability—source: SBI’s Research Studies.
- How well crafted is your organizational alignment? Managers say they are 3x more likely to miss performance commitments because of insufficient support from other functional areas—source: “Why Strategy Execution Unravels and What to Do About It,” Harvard Business Review.
- How well is your SaaS business’ team executing your strategy? 67% of well-formulated strategies fail due to poor execution. Source: “Executives Fail to Execute Strategy Because They’re Too Internally Focused,” Harvard Business Review.
- Do you agree with most C-level executives regarding the talent gap? 95% of CEOs rated hiring and retaining top performers as very important, but 76% believe their organization tolerates under-performers, hiring mistakes, and extended new hire productivity cycles—source: SBI’s Research Studies.
Is your business ready to address questions, for instance, around what to do when a recession arrives? If so, what is the developmental level of your business for making-it-happen:
- Level 1, Chaos – a corporate strategy may exist, but no functional strategies are in place.
- Level 2, Defined – corporate and functional strategies are documented but collecting dust.
- Level 3, Implemented – corporate and functional strategies exist but developed in isolation from the board and other functional departments. There is no coordinated effort to drive alignment.
- Level 4, Managed – corporate and functional strategies have been defined, aligned, and implemented
- Level 5, Predictable – corporate and functional strategies have been defined, aligned, and implemented both internally and with the external market.
What were your plans for 2020, now in execution mode? Market-leaders typically chose 1 to 3 bets: Expansion; Market Share Gains; New Market Entry. How has your business’ revenue growth management strategy performed, and how might it change should a recession be on the horizon? Need help check out our newsletter.
Trifecta Approach
The best revenue growth strategies are unique and bold. Think, for instance, Tesla and Hubspot today or Ford and Apple, who used them to avoid bankruptcy and gain the biggest turnarounds in corporate history.
“Riches do not come by crossing your fingers and walking through the day hoping. Riches and wealth comes from well-laid plans.” Source: Jim Rohn, American entrepreneur, author and motivational speaker
Your business needs an innovative blueprint foundation for its success that demonstrates “the ability to execute a strategy so well-conceived, understood and embraced by all that it almost guarantees a successful outcome, even against the odds.” Source, Eric Beaudin, Author of “Creative Execution.”
If you disagree, you commit that your business’s revenue growth management (RGM) strategy is unique and bold? But, more importantly, did you account that it must be adaptable to possible market headwinds?
If not, before a market event arrives to shake up your industry, your country, or the world, consider the following trifecta required to reallocate spending to:
- Increase Return on Sales, where you
- Increase the number of sales reps
- Or increase annual bookings per sales rep.
- Which will leverage the support of your choice, either to increase account base marketing
- Or add new Logos
- Or improve talent, presuming you have a disciplined and opportunistic talent management process.
- Increase Customer Lifetime Value, where you
- Expand Up-sell and Cross-sell capabilities
- Improve Customer Success, given all the sales in the world, won’t help if you have a leaky bucket (i.e., customer retention or contract renewal).
- Expand Customer Marketing programs to focus on Up-sell and Cross-sell
- Increase Profitability, where you
- Increase price per unit by minimizing discount level by sales reps
- or Establish a Revenue Desk to oversee customer pricing
Additionally, as your B2B SaaS business execute your choices above, consider a:
- Go-to-Market Project Office
- Change Management approach
- Decision-Making Engine (for the benefit of your front lines managers)
The bottom line, the strategies, execution, spent, and expected outcomes are all designed to help your business gain an upper hand during a recession. Therefore, what your business decides for adapting its revenue growth strategy to adverse market events needs to be based on the following:
Leading Indicators such as:
- % Revenue Invested in Sales & Marketing
- Pipeline Coverage Ratio
- Sales Representative Turnover
- % Selling Time
Lagging Indicators such as:
- % Bookings attributable to Marketing
- Annual Bookers per FTE
- Dollar Retention Rate
- Revenue Mix
- Quota Attainment by Representative
- Win Rate
Action Step
You’ve read our promise, for the challenge you may be facing along with the ‘how to’ solve it.
bEffective offers services to help your B2B SaaS business establish its revenue growth methodology in whole or for the module you need help to improve upon.
Should you wish to do it for yourself, then check out our resources menu for ‘how-to’ solve the challenge mentioned above as well as others in this area of our website. Keep in mind the research and science dictates the ‘right’ revenue growth approach needs to be built in sequence, integrated and more for achieving the promise percentage, dollars through to consistent cash flow.
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