Savvy consultants know that creating sustainable growth is a two-step: the first strategic goal is creating predictable revenues. This is the predicate to generating predictable growth.
To check out the first two Helping Clients Grow articles, click here:
Helping Clients Grow Part 1: What do you mean you want to grow?
Helping Clients Grow, Part 2: Growing Private Company Equity Value
Every CEO wants to grow. Chances are you're reading this article in part because, as chief exec of your practice, want to grow as well. And when executives say “grow,” they mean revenues.
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The formula for creating growth may be well understood, but this doesn’t mean it’s easy. And it’s expensive. The seminal question then for your client is not simply “do you want to grow?” Rather, it’s “You want to grow… now how committed are you?”
In The 4 Disciplines of Execution the authors describe “The “whirlwind” of urgent activity required to keep things running day-to-day [that] devours all the time and energy you needed to invest in executing your strategy for tomorrow.”[1] Great description -it’s been said a thousand times, CEOS are so busy working in their business that they don't have time to work on their business.
Bottom line, running a business is likely consuming all of your client’s time and budget. You are not competing against other consultants or advisors, you are competing against the whirlwind. If your client is committed to growing, they’ll need to take time out from the whirlwind, and allocate budget to growth --and growth is expensive. Is your client committed to investing the time and treasure it takes to create sustainable growth? Ask yourself, will they answer “yes” to these questions?
Savvy consultants know that creating sustainable growth is a two-step: the first strategic goal is creating predictable revenues. This is the predicate to generating predictable growth.
Where do you start? Simply put, there are business owners who want to invest time and treasure growing their companies, owners who want to improve their lifestyle by making their company easier to run, and owners who are planning on selling their business --and the individual business owner may want some of all three.
With a high commitment to growth you need to set clear, ambitious yet attainable goals; your client must be willing to invest time and capital to reach these goals. Generally speaking, owners with a high commitment to growth want to grow the business to increase cash flow. This is without consideration to any increase in the value of the business or their ability to sell the company in the future. They need a strategy for growth which considers these high priority Growth and Equity Value Drivers©:
The general idea is that with a high commitment to growth, your client understands that growth requires hard work and capital.
With a clearly understood goal, your next job is analyzing the Growth and Equity Value Drivers (‘Growth Drivers’) inside their business. This information allows planning with efficient resource use, increased rates of success and a high return on investment in internal and external services.
Imagine making these recommendations for the actions needed by your growth-focused client:
Here are the high priority Growth and Equity Value Drivers (what we call Growth Drivers), using the patented CoreValue methodology:
The CoreValue methodology sets out the best practices across these growth drivers, which are a subset of the eighteen value drivers making up the totality of a client’s operations. Your job is to analyze the strength of these growth drivers in the context of their complete operation, identifying growth drivers with a score below 7 of 10. You'll then use the CoreValue Executable Growth Plan to increase the strength of these weak drivers. Our software, education and community is here to help you at every step of the process.
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[1] McChesney, Chris et al. The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals. Free Press, 2016
'Growth and Equity Value Drivers' ©2020 Consulting Software System LLC