Everyone wants growth. Even if individual approaches vary - in strategy, style, culture or speed - few directors really want to see a reduction in revenue, and fewer want a reduction in profit. We all want more: even when our aspirations have evolved to include a "triple bottom-line" of "people, planet and profit".

 

There are certainly some independents who want to work fewer days per year. Even they however still want to achieve more in those days that they do work, and wish to secure their future pipeline of customers.

 

Before exploring the benefits of sustainable growth, let's begin by understanding what "sustainable business growth" actually means in practice. We can summarise this in nine key characteristics:

Most professionals already know a lot about growing a business. Indeed many consultants themselves specialise in areas like strategy, PR, event planning, web optimisation, sales techniques, customer advocacy ... the full list of specialisms can probably run into the hundreds.

 

It follows that none of us are short of ideas. But most of us have finite time ... perhaps all-too-finite when it comes to developing business. If we had another three days every week - with no interruption from clients, team or emails - we would already have enough ideas to be getting on with.

 

What are the constraints?

 

So if ideas are not the constraint, what is? Development-time is certainly an issue for many, though not for everyone. Here's just a few of the issues we keep hearing about. We sometimes find it useful to summarise these onto our favourite "Wilbur Grid". (Feel free to sketch your own version - this is solely illustrative).

We find that most organisations (and independents) are hungry to start with the strategy, so we begin there. Nevertheless, let's make the point now that we need to consider the cultural, belief and behavioural aspects, or no strategy will ever take off, no matter how sustainable it might be in theory.

 

Here's the one-diagram summary. Clearly, it's an overview and there is much to be said about each box. But this picture generally suffices to show the key elements of a sustainable strategy, and the relationship between them:

Notes / Key Points

• The Niche (or target), Value-Proposition and Resources of Value are all fundamental. But they are not the panacea for all ills: we need to get the value-proposition "out there", or it will be Europe's best-kept secret!
• Without a Niche and Value-Proposition, it is very hard for others to identify our ideal client. So we are probably condemned to forever doing our own prospecting.
• We need the Resources of Value as a basis for our showcase, alliances, and keep in-touch-system. These provide evidence of our competency, become the basis by which others can introduce us, provide a reason to contact people, and to stay in contact. Without them, it can be hard (for some of the team) to pick the phone up.
• Our Showcase can take many forms: exhibiting, speaking, writing, networking, web-site, hosting events, research etc. A word of warning on networking: it is effective but is among the least sustainable when we get busy. There are also geographical constraints.
• Alliances and Ambassadors are often neglected in the quest for clients. More commonly, there is a sense if "tried it and it didn't work". There are reasons for this - see separate article.
• Our Keep in Touch system must be genuinely valuable, which is where most newsletters fail. We can of course keep in touch one-to-one, but is this sustainable?
• Proposals here include presentations and interviews. See the Sales and Client-Management section of the Success 121 library for "Questions to ask before writing a proposal" (or email info@success121.com)
• Client Management is not just about asking them what they think about us! It means exploring value with them, and seeing where else we might be of value. This is both an art and a science, and when skilfully done actually enhances the customer experience ... as opposed to leaving them believing they are the subjects of another account-management initiative. (For a copy of "Hidden Value", email info@success121.com).

Five Sustainable Lead-Sources

 

A sustainable lead is defined here as one where we don't have to be present to generate it. Many businesses find they are relying on just one or two sources.

1. Repeat-business from CLIENTS. One sometimes wonders if this happens despite rather than because of the business-generation acumen of the supplier! Nevertheless, it is the best source of leads for most professional firms, and sometimes even lulls the firm into a false sense of security.
   
   
2. Introductions and referrals to others, from the CLIENTS that we are / have worked with. Again, sometimes this happens without any intervention or prompting from us. With even a small amount of systematic review on our part, this can be dramatically increased.
   
   
3. From our KEEP-IN-TOUCH SYSTEM. Perhaps all of the above happened a year ago, but the client was not ready yet. They are now, and they turn to us as a recognised port-of-call.
   
   
4. From our ALLIANCE PARTNERS. Perhaps we have even embedded an item of value in their services, so that we are routinely contacted when their client reaches a certain step in their client-journey. Perhaps we have a feature in their newsletter. Perhaps we do some research together.
   
   
5. From the SHOWCASE (online or offline). Perhaps someone notes down the website at the back of the hall, sees our article on a partner website, or finds us online. Then they visit our website and examine our resources of value. Then they email us.
   
   

   (The showcase is often the founder of the business or a few selected "rainmakers", whose networking skills weave the necessary magic. For true sustainability, this magic represents a constraint that may need to be tackled - see the quadrant 3. about CULTURE.)

So far, we have been preoccupied with the "exterior" world of strategy. Let's now turn to the interior world of individual people who have to implement the strategy, and consider what might be going on in that realm. For this purpose, we will use the traditional three roles of:

• the "finders", who prospect for new clients, often appearing to conjure them up with some special kind of conversational magic
  
• the "minders" who look after the clients and teams so as to deliver the promises of the "finders"
  
• the "grinders" who do (most of) the work.

Consider the effect of the following "belief shifts" at each level. There are many other shifts - these are meant solely to illustrate the impact of a shift towards sustainability.

For further material on this subject, see Resources Home Page

We now move back to the exterior world, but this time to the world of individual behaviour. This is the day-to-day world in which everything meets: the strategy with the culture, the human with the solution.

 

This is also the world where strategy may fail, where culture-change is never practiced, and where people move-on rather than deal with their own issues.

 

Many failures in sustainability are failures of behaviour, not strategy.

 

Here are just some of the ways in which day-to-day behaviour may be sabotaging the sustainability of the business ... even in the actions of the business-owner. Note that most of these can apply even when the strategy is defined and clear.

• swamped with emails, driven by the inbox
• not listening, showing how clever one is
• procrastinating, not dealing with certain issues or people or processes
• allowing development-time to be flooded by client-delivery
• verbose in communication, allowing meetings to overrun
• difficulty saying No
• not consulting with others, ploughing ahead without consensus
• discouraging team-members by criticism, paternalism, lack of respect
• gossip
• always knowing the answer, not making space for the unknown

Most of these boil down to two areas: habits of time-management and habits of communication. Again, there are other shifts needed for genuine sustainability, these are listed as illustrative.

Culture is the cement that binds all the other building-blocks ... or not! It may be expressed in behaviour, or suppressed in unspoken mood.

 

Many of the problems that professionals experience commercially are problems of culture rather than problems of strategy. Take pricing, for example: there may be cultural discourses, or "stories" that ...

• "money is a dangerous subject, best not discussed"
• "what's in this for me?"

When it comes to marketing and selling, we have similar cultural discourses, perhaps unspoken, but always powerful. The following examples are real-life ones that had to be addressed in order to implement the above strategy.

• "selling is a distasteful activity"
• "we don't have permission to explore opportunities"
• "everything is evaluated, so don't take risks"
• "what's the point?" (Resignation)

Addressing such factors is too complex to address here, some useful articles may be found on the "Leadership" section of this library. One key distinction may help to point the way: sustainable leadership is about building culture with, rather than for, the team. So it's best not to start with "the solution"!

 

There is one huge, compelling reason to improve culture: every time a key professional walks out the door, they take clients (and perhaps colleagues) with them.

 

Yet culture-improvement is a bit like happiness: it's best achieved when we are enjoying doing something else (like implementing strategy) rather than pursuing it as a topic in its own right. Culture is the "how" we do things, rather than the "what" that we do.

The purpose of this article has been to present a top-level, integrated, helicopter-view of sustainable business growth. It this field, many commentators are specialists in culture or strategy (or motivation or organisation or behaviour); which means that leaders are often left puzzled over the resulting Rubik's Cube. Or they may be disappointed at the results of a genuinely worthy initiative in one or other of the above quadrants; sadly impeded by issues in the other three quadrants.

 

Add to that the reality of limited development time, and it's no surprise that few organisations have the degree of sustainability that they would like. The benefits of doing so include:

• less ongoing marketing and selling, once the initial components above are built
• high retention of key people, for whom enjoyment and reward is both high and "deep", where employee-advocacy is also high in a collaborative culture
• a sense of identity in the marketplace, where the value of what we do is evident, and is backed up with extensive customer-advocacy and alliance-relationships
• more revenue in less time, due to less selling, higher revenue and outstanding productivity via wholehearted enjoyment of the job

These benefits apply equally to an independent business. The implementation of the culture-quadrant may be different, but the end-goal remains the same: a self-sustaining practice that earns more fees in less time.

If you have got this far, (in our attention-deficit society!), the chances are that "sustainable business growth" means something significant to you. You might want to ask yourself why this is important. If you are contemplating a specific way forward, you may also wish to explore a strategy "health-check", if only to make sure that the initial foundations are solid, that the essential building-blocks are in place.

(Former or current clients of Success 121 are welcome to this service free of charge.)

Further information

For related articles, see www.success121.com. For further discussion, "health-check", ideas for a conference or team-training session, you are welcome to contact the author by emailing john@success121.com

© John Niland, Success 121, June 2008. May be reproduced on condition that the "Further Information" section above is included.