If you ask the CEOs of Gazelles and successful companies, ‘What really drives your company’s growth?’ you might get different answers from each of them on how they maximise their revenue growth.
And as some of us would like to believe, company growth doesn’t depend on securing a sweet spot in Silicone Valley or funneling in top MBA graduates on your payroll…
Given the industry, nature of the products and one’s targeted audience or client base – the growth may depend on many factors such as; new technology, staffing, Marketing/Sales processes, training, company culture, etc.
As per the European Commission definition, High-Growth Company is an enterprise with an average annualised growth greater than 20% per year, over a three-year period. And if in case you’re wondering what ‘Gazelles’ are – They are companies that show 20 percent revenue growth annually for four consecutive years, starting from a revenue base of at least $1 million.
So what differentiates a Gazelle from other companies? To answer this question we need to look into the findings of 2017 Growth Drivers Report, which has in fact boiled down the answer to a few key strategies and tactics that high-growth companies are most likely to execute, than their ‘laggard’ counterparts.
Here are 5 such key drivers of High-Growth Companies:
1. High Growth Companies use Account Based Strategies
As it turns out, high-growth companies are 2.5 times more likely to use Account Based Marketing (ABM) Strategy, than the low growth ones. Also, cannot deny the fact that 85% of marketers believe Account Based Marketing (ABM) to be delivering serious ROIs than any other B2B marketing approaches.
They are again, almost twice as likely to use Account Based Sales Development (ABSD) or Account Based Customer Success (ABCS) Strategy, than low growth companies. It’s estimated that fewer than one-third of low-growth companies use any account based strategy outside Account Based Sales (ABS). In fact low-growth companies are 56% more likely to use no account-based strategies.
The underlying pattern we can see here is how account-based strategies are supporting the notion of growth by aligning a unified sales, marketing, and post-sale approach, which is helping to engage multiple contacts at target accounts with highly personalised, multi-channel communications.
The heart of it lies in achieving Sales, Marketing and Customer success alignment by implementing organisation-wide Account Based Strategies, to bring about a synergetic growth within the organisation.
2. Outbound Prospecting & Cold Calling
With respect to Outbound Prospecting, the high-growth companies are twice as likely to view ‘cold calling’ as highly effective and ‘alive’,whereas even though low-growth companies accepted that ‘cold calling’ is alive, they admitted not being able to figure out the best way to do it. Low-growth companies were also more likely to be undecided about cold calling and to equally call it as being ‘dead’.
High-growth companies, who said cold calling was alive, received 42% higher growth rate than the ones who said it was dead. They were more likely to have a balanced mix of sales appointments generated from outbound prospecting and inbound leads.
As per the report, High growth companies with less than 33% of appointments from outbound had median annual growth of 40% while those that booked more than 33% of appointments from outbound had median annual growth of 100%.
3. Training/Mentoring Sales Teams
The high growth companies have been found to dedicate three or more hours per week in training their teams, while others limited the training to one or two hours weekly.
Though increase in training spiked the growth rate in high-growth groups, it didn’t bring the same results with the low growth group – suggesting that training, in of itself may not deliver the desired growth, but does play significant role in sustaining it.
The trainings however, may not be effective when having a dry run with PowerPoints and slides. The skills can be honed much faster when coached and mentored during actual practice. Fast growing organisations train constantly to maintain the momentum for teams to perform at peak level.
For some of the high-growth companies who put in more than five hours of training per week, they were able to achieve growth rates up to 575%.
4. ‘Data Quality’ Management
Marketing teams who were more efficient in managing data quality, lead volume and ROI lift growth rates were more likely to accelerate growth than the ones less competent.
Lack of high quality data was cited as one of the major inhibitor to growth by the high-growth companies. Data plays a critical role in the success or failure of a campaign, its quality determines how marketers are able to accurately test, measure and invest in ROI programs and how they can optimise spending by identifying what’s working and what’s not.
Bad data makes for poor judgement, it leads sales reps to spend too much time in non-selling activities, which wastes time by generating non-qualified leads and inhibits the flow of the sales process.
Quality data works as the foundation for successful sales and marketing strategies. It enables marketing teams to send relevant, focused and highly converting messages and campaigns to reach out and engage with the right prospects.
5. Sales & Marketing Technology
High-Growth companies tend to have deeper sales and marketing stacks than their low-growth peers. They’re found to leverage more than twice as many solutions in their sales tech stacks and 23% more solutions in their marketing tech stacks.
Sales and Marketing teams that are less tech savvy are suppressing growth rates, and such ‘poor adoption of technology and systems’ is found to be the second leading growth inhibitor at low-growth companies.
The right technology stacks can give companies a boost in productivity, help support team enablement, increase engagement, create a competitive edge over others, and help solve many operational challenges.
Organisations which are at the forefront of adopting new technologies are highly inclined to grow more rapidly than those who are slow to change. The survey also found that high-growth companies hired staff that are more technology-savvy and were adaptable to change.
Finally..
We hope the above takeaways on key drivers for growth will help you to decipher the growth strategies for your company, maximise your revenue and propel your teams for the ‘high-growth’ success!
If you'd like further assistance or would like to discuss anything covered today, we'd love to hear from you.
Call Andy Fox (me) on (03) 5249 5570 or email andy@element7digital.com.au
Our Website is element7digital.com.au
