What should we do to grow the business?

One of the first things I’m often asked by new clients is: “What should we do to grow the business?” Which is a very good and natural question. Defining what you have to offer, and who is likely to be interested in the offering, is a pretty good place to start. Then developing a strategy for getting the message out to the right people is ALSO a good and natural thing – for successful businesses. OK -  maybe you can do it by luck, or being in the right place at the right time (which is a lot like luck), but a certain amount of intelligence gathering and planning can be pretty effective too.
However – if during the planning the plan ITSELF becomes the goal, there could be a problem. Unless you are P&G, pushing too many initiatives or trying to support too many brands or products is simply unrealistic and can even be a death knell. 

The following is a Reality TV-like story (with appropriate name changes to protect the innocent) of one company’s attempts to put together a business plan for reversing a downward sales slope. See if you can “spy” what’s wrong with this picture:

In a small/mid-size (just under $100 mil) firm, seven white males and two recently added women spent a couple of days in a conference room during their regularly scheduled monthly board meetings. After a rousing discussion confirming that the organization lacked focus, they sorted through dozens of possible solutions to come up with the TOP priorities for the remaining seven months of the year:

1. Core Product – Phase II Launch
2. Extension of Core Product – Phase IV Launch
3. New Product Launch
4. New Product Launch
5. Thought Leadership Events
6. Product Showcase Events
7. A Top Client Annual Event
8. Prospecting for new clients
9. Keeping existing clients
10. Teaching sales a new way of selling
11. Getting sales to monthly online education sessions
12. Getting sales to attend two day face-to-face education sessions
13. Getting new sales people to 5-day on-boarding sessions
14. Getting sales to spend more time selling
15. Overhauling the corporate web site
16. Finalizing collateral re-branding that no one uses
17. Monthly direct mailings
18. Monthly ‘special focus’ direct mailings
19. Monthly webinars…no, make that bi-monthly
20. Penetrating the healthcare market

When they finally came out of the conference room, no workers were left.

If you have thoughts or reactions you’d like to share – or perhaps similar stories to use as examples of both what to do and what to avoid, I’d love to hear them.

Donna

(Many thanks to the Lion Queen for this submission)