Growth Lessons

Growth Lesson 5 - Ultimate Competitive Advantage.  The ultimate source of competitive advantage lies with personal and self-development.  Those businesses that create the opportunity for learning benefit enormously from the impact it creates - high tuned individuals that want to do better.

This is also a observation of winning individuals; they have a thirst for learning and developing their skills and competencies. However this route to learning can be both through formal and informal means.

The informal routes involve what is called the power of observation and experiential learning, watching what the best do and then learning from that - this is a key development route for many entrepreneurs and successful individuals.

As one award winning Director said  “There are a number of people who have influenced my career, I watch what they do, get under the skin of why they are so good, learn from it and inject my own personality into the approach to make it mine”. Learning on the job can often fast track success.

The formal routes involve personal investment, both time and money in accessing new learning, this could include doing a part time MBA, buying self help books or going to weekend courses, listening to a pod cast or motivational CD in the car.

Whatever route - stand by the fact that the ultimate source of competitive advantage sits within you!


Growth Lesson 4 - Building a Team. Creating a winning team is vital to success. High growth businesses move quickly and they must be built upon a foundation of the right people doing the right things. All too often businesses that fail to reach their full potential have the “wrong people doing the right job”. A key requirement for any fast thinking business is having the talent in place to cope with the challenges that lie ahead. Having an effective team in place is a prerequisite for commercial success, it is crucial to raising finance, securing new business, creating effective internal processes and building a long term sustainable future.

Growth wish businesses must build a team of people whose complementary skills are aligned to one goal - winning! This must consist of:

• Thinker - an individual that leads the way, creates a vision and articulates to other stakeholders with passion and energy
• Sellers - individuals that can build relationships with customers and effectively sell the business proposition
• Doers - individuals that produce and deliver products and services with total customer satisfaction
• Controllers - individuals that ensure the business is on track and all key performance indicators are being met (what gets measured gets done)

These four corners of building a highly effective team result in the creation of disciplined entrepreneurship. An organisation with effective controls and systems underpinned by a philosophy of innovation, creative flair and customer focus.


Growth Lesson 3 - Great Selling. Vital to the successful growth of any business is the need for excellent selling skills. Whilst there is no empirical evidence to suggest that these skills are lacking in UK businesses, there is a widespread recognition that many companies fall short of the mark when it comes to high performance selling. In the words of one of the UK’s most accomplished entrepreneurs Sir Tom Hunter, “an entrepreneur can’t succeed if they can’t sell, period”

Many excellent ideas and businesses fail to realize their full commercial potential because of poorly executed sales strategies. The term selling conjures up many stereotypical characters such as Del Boy or Arthur Daley - the reality is great sales people are anything but this image mass media has created. Successful businesses are underpinned by a disciplined approach to selling where individuals are passionate about making a difference to their customer’s, they and their organisations also possess:

• An in depth understanding of how their products and services can solve customers problems. They understand very clearly the customers world and what makes them different to other suppliers.
• A clearly defined process for finding, reaching, winning and keeping customers. This makes selling very efficient and targeted. Successful businesses have a marketing driven approach to selling.
• A motivated environment where individuals and teams are energised to winning. Such momentum is created through having a clear sense of purpose in a goal orientated environment.

Businesses need to pay more attention to their sales skills and strategies - winners are great at selling themselves, their business and their products and services. Not enough companies give enough attention to the effectiveness of their sales strategy.


Growth Lesson 2 - What Makes You Different?  Markets are changing at a pace never known before.  Many sectors and industries are highly competitive and crowded with businesses operating “me too” strategies that are poorly differentiation and lacking any competitive edge.  Price is often the basis upon which many companies seek to compete, this is not sustainable and leaves companies wide open to attack from others. These organisations are operating on borrowed time and unless they rethink how they do things, decline is inevitable.