Growing a firm has numerous advantages. It can draw in talent, offer economies of scale, pay off investors, and prevent obsolescence. Even firms that don’t require growth to thrive may nonetheless seek it out for these and other reasons.
But not every kind of growth is good. Some can even reduce value, such as when an acquisition fails or when leadership overspends on a particular program. Other growth patterns cannot be maintained. Additionally, it can be more difficult to accomplish any meaningful growth the bigger or more established a company is.
The real key to success is to plan and manage growth, via growth strategies. And one of the best resources for doing this are experienced teams offering strategic growth consulting, like those Pearl Lemon Consultants can provide.
Maintaining a positive cash flow, satisfying consumer expectations, and keeping employees on board are all crucial business goals.
However, if you ask any business owner, they’ll tell you that growth is one of, if not the main, corporate objectives. Revenue increases and market share increases as a result of growth. It offers you the chance to spend money on new resources to help your company become what you’ve always wanted it to be.
But if you’re not prepared, rapid growth can be a minefield. It nearly always entails accepting new obligations and clients. It may even backfire and end up costing you a lot of money if you don’t have the employees, technology, and trainings in place to handle your growth.
Here are the key distinctions between growth for growth’s sake and strategic growth.
You’ve probably heard a lot of terrifying tales about startups that became too large for their boots. When people are flush with venture funding and on a growth trajectory that seems to go on forever, overconfidence can set in, which leads to sloppiness.
According to one study from California State University, businesses with the greatest revenue growth—average annual sales growth of 167% over ten years—performed worse in terms of share price than their slower-growing rivals (those with an average annual sales growth of 26%).
Rapid growth can have some unexpected effects, such as the following:
However, growth rate isn’t the main determinant of success or failure. Fast-growing businesses are common, and many of them succeed. Everything depends on your resource allocation and the growth management and sustainability methods you have in place.
Forbes reports that only 29% of slow-growing businesses devote substantial resources and effort in training their sales personnel, compared to nearly 50% of the fastest-growing businesses.
Usually, you can detect when growth is detrimental to your company. Your business might see an increase in client or consumer complaints and HR issues, and your staff might face stress and begin jumping ship en masse. It could be time to take a step back and develop a growth strategy if you discover that you are unable to meet the demands of both your clients and employees. and the best way to do that is with the help of formal strategic growth consulting.
Strategic growth is growth that is planned. Instead of being the consequence of chance or uncontrollable market forces, it was the result of a strategic initiative. Companies occasionally strike it lucky and their goods or services become popular and profitable right away. However, businesses typically need to develop a growth plan in advance and then implement it.
Even harder is maintaining product quality, high levels of customer satisfaction and managing employee needs and expectations. Too often, as companies grow, the principles and objectives that led to their initial successes are compromised. Their attention to product quality slips. Or their ability to innovate declines. Employees are overburdened and underappreciated. In short, businesses do indeed get ‘too big for their boots’ and everyone, and everything suffers as a result, including, ultimately, the business’ bottom line.
If you chose us as your strategic growth consulting team, we work with you to find solid growth prospects that you can then develop in a consistent, methodical manner. In doing so, we collaborate with you to:
Not every business knows what ideal growth for them looks like, and therefore don’t quite know what they should be doing to kick start growth in the first place. Working with our strategic growth consulting team you will uncover the best opportunities for strategic growth for your unique business and begin to develop a growth plan that everyone involved can see and understand.
Client or customer satisfaction is everything. If you are not currently achieving it at the highest levels then any growth will only serve to make the situation worse. Using a variety of tools and methodologies our consulting team will analyze the current state of your customer satisfaction efforts and figure out what might need to change before you try to grow your current business any further.
Before you try to kick start business growth with a ton of new offerings it pays to determine if you are really making the most of the things you already offer. You do not always have to reinvent the wheel, or keep adding more wheels, to grow.
Sometimes a fresh perspective can help you uncover ways you can get more from what you have already invested so much time, money and effort into creating. Pearl Lemon Consultants will provide that fresh perspective as well as the help you might need on a short term basis to do things like expand your marketing or seek out new audiences.
Most businesses have a few failed ideas, projects or even products that they would really rather forget about and move on from. However, the age old adage is true: you can learn an awful lot from your mistakes. Working with you our strategic growth consulting team will examine your previous failures, help determine what went wrong and why, and what can be learned from it all that can help guide new successes and, as a result, new growth.
Sometimes your competitors are doing something well that, with the right planning, you could probably do much better. Our strategic growth consulting team will help you determine what those things might be and the best way to go about putting your plans into action.
Long term growth success comes from good planning, and understanding just what you want growth to achieve. Essentially it means understanding where you want your company to be in a year, five years and even a decade from now. Once you have that long term vision in place it is easier and more effective to achieve the growth plans and strategies that will get you there.
Technology can be one of the keys to strategic growth, but investments in the wrong technology, or in expensive offerings you just don’t need can just as easily stall growth.
The strategic growth consulting team at Pearl Lemon Consultants is an especially diverse one, encompassing a number of experts in various fields, including tech specialists who will be able to help determine which investments make sense for your overall growth plans and which just don’t.
Ready to take your business to the next level with strategic growth consulting? Contact us today and let’s talk about how we can help you do that.
Are you ready to learn more about the benefits of partnering with Pearl Lemon Consultants for talent management consulting?
Get in touch with us right away and let’s chat about it.
Contact Us
© All Rights Reserved 2024 | Company Number: 10411490 | VAT Number: 252 7124 23
