Three Factors To Accommodate Explosive Business Growth
There’s been a lot written about a company I used to work for that sold for billions of dollars about a decade ago. When I read those articles, the perceptions are often skewed toward the people interviewed and their positions within the company. Now, a decade later, I’d like to share some insights on three factors I believe genuinely stood out that led to the company’s success:
Sales: Remove Roadblocks and Reward Accomplishments.
This company was always described as a sales-driven organization. The sales staff was incredible, disciplined and goal-oriented. They weren’t afraid to turn over staff for underperformance and generously reward great performance.
Leaders must believe they can achieve exponentially larger goals than they’ve worked on prior. They must encourage their teams daily, measure every effort and result, remove roadblocks to nurture and push prospects to the goal line, and reward teams generously for their output. This often means that the sales teams that have gotten you to where you are aren’t the same ones that will get you where you need to be. It’s always difficult to turn over good people, but if your sales staff doesn’t believe they can get you where you need to be, they must be replaced.
Service: Empower Your Team To Empower Your Clients.
The unsung hero of this company was its account management and customer service staff. While other leaders in the organization were often spotlighted in glowing articles, few people could tell you who ran the customer service department during the company’s incredible growth.
While the sales department closed larger opportunities quarter after quarter, the complexities and challenges of the contract were always tossed over the wall to the services team. They were empowered by leadership to succeed and did everything possible to make it happen. When I launched my company, my first hire was an advocate for our clients whose job was to ensure their success.
Your service leaders must be excited about the sales possibilities that are coming. Working closely with sales, service, and account management can prepare for the impossible and mitigate onboarding risks. A service team mired in a process that can’t remove impediments will put large-scale growth opportunities at risk.
Scale: Don’t Be Afraid To Invest.
The services department would have never been successful without the company’s ability to scale. At one critical point, we had an outage that could have easily spelled doom for future growth. The issue’s core was that the company didn’t make the investments it should have. Leadership was quickly replaced, and the new leader immediately spent millions of dollars and redirected the company’s path to scale.
While competing companies could manage millions of transactions, we could manage hundreds of billions of transactions with an infrastructure that could continue to grow. Clients couldn’t help but tout the capabilities of the system and the service teams that ensured success to their peers throughout the industry, and the ability to close monumental sales became commonplace.
Your organization must relentlessly invest in high-scale technologies and development resources that will outpace your competitors. I watched the company spend millions of dollars overnight to equip our developers with better, faster equipment. It was never treated as an expense; it was seen as a necessary investment in productivity. Decades ago, decisions like that took massive capital investments and could severely impact the company’s bottom line. Today, software rentals, cloud computing, and hardware leasing options allow companies to scale and recoup their investment immediately.
What about marketing? Early in the company’s history, we were truly blessed with marketing leadership that understood the power of a brand and consistent message. While marketing leadership changed over time, it honestly didn’t have the impact that most people believe. The foundation of the brand and the continued success and growth of the company overshadowed any initiative that marketing could come up with. In its latter years, marketing for the company may have been one of the easiest jobs ever — the company was destined to be great because of its sales, service, and scale.
What are you doing to enable growth in your organization?
Years after I left the company, a vice president told me you must be willing to get your nose bloody when scaling your company. In other words, your leadership must be willing to risk failure if you ever hope to see your full potential. Simply put, you can’t predict what explosive growth will do to the company; you have to experience it and ride out the storm.
Explosive business growth requires a combination of all factors – sales, service, and scale. If you’re weak in any one area, you will likely not attain it. While technology and funding are necessary, leadership is the lynchpin of predicting explosive growth within an organization.
You must have leaders who are agile, scrappy, and risk-averse. They must be willing to coach, educate, and push teams to their full potential. And they must be willing to replace people who are inhibiting growth.
Within each factor, a company must have the focus, discipline, and unrelenting optimism that will drive the company forward. You’ll get your nose bloody occasionally, but you’re also much more likely to reach your maximum potential.
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