What do almost all companies — B2B or B2C — share in common? This is not a trick question. They all want healthy revenue growth.
Yet growth for the sake of growth is not always wise. Revenue growth has to translate down to the bottom line — so leadership must be smart and strategic about how to achieve growth.
The following are three strategies we have seen our clients’ leadership employ in the last year to achieve sustainable, healthy growth.
Cross-selling for revenue growth.
I am listing this revenue growth strategy first but cross-selling is often thought of last, if even at all. Do not let this strategy get lost in the shuffle. Look to your product and service portfolio. Look to your past buyers and clients. What solutions of yours have they found valuable in the past? Are there other solutions in your portfolio that could be an answer to their other needs? To their unspoken needs?
Some investment is likely necessary to analyze which cross-sells will be most-valuable for which clients. But that does not mean you have to double or triple marketing efforts or add a dozen new salespeople to your payroll. It may look something like marketing creates a thought leadership piece that tells the story of “clients who have found value out of product A are finding value in products E and G.” After all, according to Hubspot, salespeople are 60-70% more likely to sell to an existing customer than to a new prospect, so cross-selling is key.
Add, subtract or reshuffle salespeople for revenue growth.
A more common means of revenue growth is focusing on the sales team. We see many companies that make a goal of growing their sales by, say, 20%. So they add 10 new sales reps to achieve that growth.
In some cases, adding new salespeople may be appropriate. But maybe it is not 10 sellers — maybe it is seven. Maybe it is not adding a single salesperson but rather reshuffling the geographies where their current sales team is selling. Maybe your team has been selling to manufacturing companies in the Midwest but the market is changing, so instead of the three sales reps, you only need two there and can shift the third headcount to a different geography. Most of this strategy is rationalizing the investment in new salespeople and where they best can serve your markets and industries.
Mergers and acquisitions for revenue growth.
Unlike the previous two strategies, this growth is not organic. Taking advantage of mergers and acquisitions takes preparation, research and rationalization. Maybe there is a partner of your company that has an attractive revenue profile on which you could capitalize. Maybe it is a case where your company sells to CFOs and their company sells to CFOs, and if you acquire them you can go after the joint value proposition as well as capitalize on even more clear cross-selling opportunities (see above for more on that).
The takeaway here is that there are multiple ways to work toward a goal of healthy revenue growth, and these three examples are steadfast strategies for doing so. If your company could benefit from an outside perspective for exploring the best avenues for growth, contact me.