For the previous a number of years, I’ve written just a few posts every fall that handle some facet of selling planning. With the fourth quarter of 2023 starting as we speak, many entrepreneurs could have began (or quickly can be beginning) their planning for 2024.
Final week’s publish mentioned how entrepreneurs can use the jobs-to-be-done framework to outline their market and decide how their services or products create worth for purchasers. This framework helps entrepreneurs pinpoint what’s going to inspire their clients to purchase.
The next publish describes a framework entrepreneurs can use to establish what sources of income progress are (or may be) accessible to them. Figuring out sources of potential income progress is a vital a part of a sound planning course of.
I revealed this publish in 2019, however the content material of the publish is as related as we speak because it was 4 years in the past. What follows is a evenly edited model of the unique publish.
The Unique Put up
Driving constant, worthwhile income progress is without doubt one of the biggest challenges that enterprise and advertising leaders face. The important thing phrase in that sentence is “constant.” Many firms can produce substantial income progress sporadically or over a brief time period, nevertheless it’s exceptionally troublesome to persistently generate above-average progress over the long run.
Enterprise and advertising leaders should carry out two distinct however associated duties to maximise income progress:
- They need to establish what progress alternatives are (or may be) accessible to them and decide which of these progress alternatives are most tasty.
- They need to discover the correct steadiness between short-term and long-term progress alternatives.
On this publish, I am going to give attention to how enterprise and advertising leaders can establish progress alternatives.
Structural Sources of Progress
Step one in figuring out potential progress alternatives is to grasp the dynamics of income progress – the way it occurs or, extra precisely, the place it originates. There are, the truth is, a number of distinct sources of progress. These structural sources of progress will not be depending on how an organization is organized or on the varieties of services or products it sells. As a substitute, they’re based mostly on the enterprise and advertising methods that an organization makes use of to faucet into every supply.
- Gross sales of present merchandise in present markets (market penetration technique)
- Gross sales of present merchandise in new markets (market improvement technique)
- Gross sales of new merchandise in present markets (product improvement technique)
- Gross sales of new merchandise in new markets (diversification technique)
- Persevering with gross sales to present clients (base retention)
- Gross sales received from the competitors (market share achieve)
- New gross sales in an increasing market (market positioning)
- Gross sales from increasing into associated markets (adjoining market growth)
- Gross sales from increasing into new, unrelated traces of enterprise (diversification)
I’ve used each of those fashions when working with shoppers to border our discussions about find out how to develop. However over time, I’ve expanded on these fashions to create a extra detailed framework of the choice methods to generate progress. The present model of my framework is proven within the following diagram.
This framework is an efficient software for exciting your serious about find out how to develop what you are promoting and for figuring out the expansion alternatives which might be (or may be) accessible to what you are promoting. When utilizing this framework, it is necessary to maintain a number of issues in thoughts.
First, the excellent news is that these structural sources of progress are all the time current, not less than to a point. Their existence is not dependent in the marketplace situations an organization is going through at a selected second in time. Nonetheless, the quantity of income that an organization can receive from every supply is significantly influenced by the market and aggressive atmosphere.Â
So the framework identifies potential sources of income progress, nevertheless it would not inform you concerning the relative attractiveness of these sources. You will want to make use of conventional market and aggressive evaluation instruments and strategies to carry out that analysis.
Second, no single supply of progress is probably going to offer all of the income you should attain your progress goal.
And third, every supply of progress has distinctive attributes and dynamics. So you will want a selected technique and sport plan for every supply of progress you select to pursue.
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