Every year, I meet business owners who ask essentially the same question. “Our products are good. Our people work hard. So why aren’t we growing?”
It is a fair question. What’s interesting is that another company, in the same industry, serving the same customers, often grows much faster.
Same economy. Same regulations. Sometimes even the same suppliers. Yet the results are completely different.
So what explains the gap? Most people immediately look at execution. They increase sales efforts. Launch another promotion. Increase advertising. Hire more salespeople.
These may help. But they rarely solve the real problem. Because growth is usually determined long before execution begins.
It starts with diagnosis. A doctor does not prescribe medicine before making a diagnosis. A consultant should not prescribe strategy before understanding the business.
Unfortunately, many companies skip this step. They assume they already know the problem.
Often, they don’t.
The market has changed. Consumers have changed. Channels have changed. Competition has changed.
Technology has changed. The assumptions that helped a company succeed five years ago may now be limiting its growth.
That is why companies should periodically audit themselves. Not because something is wrong. But because something may have changed.
A business model that worked before may no longer be the best one today. A positioning that differentiated the brand years ago may now sound exactly like everyone else’s.
The target market may have evolved. Consumer culture certainly has. Digital has changed how customers search, compare, buy, and recommend.
Even the sales organization may be optimized for yesterday’s customer instead of today’s.
Growing companies understand this. They do not simply ask, “How can we sell more?” They ask, “What is preventing customers from buying more?”
Those are two very different questions. One focuses on the company. The other focuses on the market. The first assumes the answer is selling harder. The second assumes the answer is understanding better.
In my experience, the companies that sustain growth are usually the ones that make fewer assumptions. They observe more. Listen more. Question more. Diagnose better.
Only then do they decide what to do.
This is also why we organized two executive learning conferences this year.
The Mansmith Sales Summit focuses on one question:
How do companies achieve commercial excellence and sustainable growth?
Six accomplished business leaders will share not theories, but practices that have worked in their organizations.
The Mansmith Marketing Plan Summit asks a related question.
Before writing a marketing plan, what should a company examine? Twelve marketing practitioners will discuss the strategic audits that too many organizations overlook: from the Business Model Audit and Consumer Culture Audit to Positioning, Segmentation, Sales Force, and Digital Audits, among others.
A good marketing plan is not built on optimism. It is built on diagnosis. Whether you are a business owner, CEO, marketing executive, or sales leader, the better question is this: Are you solving the right problem?
Companies rarely stop growing because they suddenly become less capable. More often, they stop growing because they continue solving yesterday’s problems while the market has already moved on.
The companies that continue to grow are usually the ones that notice the change first, and respond before everyone else.
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Email info@mansmith.net for registration