When we talk revenue growth and revenue performance, it is easy to focus on business and leave out the why. Why you joined or started the company. Why you spend 60-plus hours a week devoted to your role. Why you have helped develop and position your solutions to solve real problems and help others prosper.
I am talking about your customer, your target audience. And while focusing on the customer may seem like apples to the oranges of your revenue performance, in fact every single strategy for growing your business will be successful only if you have your customer front and center in your rationalization.
Seek to Serve, Not to Sell™
When you want to explore cross-selling, the question is not what products you can push on your customers. It is: What other problems are my customers facing that my product portfolio can address? What status quos can I help them break free from with these other offerings they have not explored?
When you are looking to invest dollars into your business to shift or expand your sales team, you do not do so because it will benefit your business. You instead look at through a different lens: How can I distribute my team to best serve our target customer? You consider: How can we expand our product portfolio to solve problems our customers are still experiencing? What other industries can our solutions provide value?
When you merge with or acquire another business, you do not do so because it would make your company look good or because you will be larger. You do so because, together, you can help your customer even more. You offer a joint value proposition that has stronger benefits all around.
They Prosper — You Prosper
When you are thinking about investing money back into the company as a way to grow in revenue, think of it as investing in your customer, on your customer’s behalf. Because when you continue to be committed to knowing who your customer is, partnering with them for their success and finding new ways to serve them — be that cross-selling, merging or acquiring a new company, or developing new products/heading to new geographies/hiring better people, or a host of other strategies — your revenue will grow as a result.