How to Nail Your Growth Plan and Actually Get Results

Written By Helen Shorthouse
office desk planning

As businesses continue navigating through the year, many of us are now armed with refreshed budgets and updated plans that come with the start of a new financial year. Or your year-end may be just coming up, so you are getting your plans and budgets ready.

If growth is your thing (I hope it is), you’ve hopefully got an idea of what you want to achieve, an appropriate budget (actual, or in principle) and a list of priorities.

Having a plan is one thing, but making it happen is a different thing altogether… maybe that’s why so many of our actual ‘New Year’s Resolutions’ fall off so early. 

How are you going to ensure you keep on track?

I thought I’d share some of the tips and tricks I use with my clients which help keep everyone focused on priorities, moving forward, held accountable and - importantly - able to iterate and adjust if needed.

There are essentially 3 initial steps, which are summarised below:

     Step 1 - Document the Objectives & Your Approach 

     Step 2 - Understand the Steps To Success

     Step 3 - Eat Your Elephant in Bite-Sized Chunks

I hope they are helpful - I’d love to hear what works for you, or the challenges you are having in achieving your growth goals. Give me a shout if you have questions, or need a hand.

Step 1 - Document the Objectives & Your Approach 

  1. What are your overall business goals and objectives? 

  2. Identify those that relate to marketing and sales and be specific

    1. Revenue growth of $X / Y%

    2. Entering new markets eg California and Texas in the USA (“the USA” is too broad) 

    3. Entering new market segments eg financial services consultants 

    4. New products eg create our existing service to an online software service

    5. Customer acquisition eg 12 new clients in this market

    6. Growth of existing customers

    7. Growing your team

    8. Developing a reseller channel

  3. What’s the approach you are going to take - keep it at a top level, for example:

    1. Revenue growth through the acquisition of new customers in New Zealand using existing success in the winery trade as a leverage

    2. Develop an MVP of our wizbang software, working with a group of our top tier customers, ready to launch in the 2nd half of the year

  4. Capture any assumptions which have been made, for example

    1. There will be no change to price, staffing, competitive landscape 

    2. We assume that 40% of our existing clients buying product A will buy product B as an upsell, the rest of the growth we assume will come from net new clients 

Step 2 - Understand the Steps To Success

shorthouse consulting framework

  1. Build a marketing machine / engine. This is not just about doing the tactics, but includes ensuring you have systems & processes and people & resources in place. This will give you a programmatic and sustained approach to your marketing & sales which will help you deliver good results as you grow

  2. Be clear what your sales and marketing priorities are

    1. What do you need for them to be successful? 

  3. Create a plan that builds towards your overall objectives & strategy 

  4. If you are not sure what you need to do, take this FREE Marketing & Sales Audit. A few simple questions will show where the gaps are in your sales & marketing and more importantly, where to focus and prioritise 

Take your audit now

Step 3 - Eat Your Elephant in Bite-Sized Chunks

  1. Be real - sometimes you have a big long list of what you want to achieve. If the resources are small (people and / or money) you need to get real! It just means breaking each step down into more manageable chunks.

    1. If you have identified you need to focus on developing the plan first, implementing a key piece of tech, or more customer research, then allow time for that in your priority list

  2. Be clear about what good looks like in your sales and marketing activity. How will you know if you are successful? Some of this might be about pure sales numbers (revenue or customers), but some of it might be about moving forward on the steps to success, for example:

    1. We will have awareness of our product in the market (how will you know?)

    2. We will have weekly LinkedIn posts and a quarterly customer event

    3. Our sales team have a library of sales collateral (one presentation, 3 case studies and a brochure) for our top 5 products 

    4. Write down what ‘good’ (or great) looks like in the long-term and what it looks like this year. Make it big and bold - this will keep you and your stakeholders focused! 

  3. Summarise your priorities on a one pager (see examples) and stick this up somewhere visible

  4. This is also a really useful way of communicating to your stakeholders what your priorities are.  

    1. It can be super easy to get distracted and forget what you were prioritising as the year progresses and ‘shiny new’ ideas arrive. I’m not saying this is locked in and you can’t change it even if the environment and circumstances change, but I have found it to be super useful for keeping everyone focused on the priorities which were agreed with good reason, rather than darting from one tactic to the next

    2. It can also be a useful summary to reference and make decisions about if things do need to change (including what do we stop doing) 

Example one pager summary of priorities 

Growth isn't just about big ideas; it's about taking those ideas and turning them into a clear plan you can actually follow. By figuring out what you want to achieve, working out your top priorities, and breaking it all down into bite-sized chunks, you'll be well on your way to success.

Keen to see where you can improve? Have a look at the Marketing & Sales Audit to spot gaps in your plan and figure out where to focus your efforts

Helen Shorthouse
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