The Unspoken, Shocking Truth About Building a Revenue Growth Machine

What Other Agencies, Software Companies And Consultants Don’t Want You To Know

With Halloween right around the corner, it’s time to pull out all of the references to ghosts and goblins. But there is something very scary going on right now, and if your company is considering upgrading its investment in revenue growth, you’re going to want to read this.

Do you want to grow your company? Ask a room full of executives, and if 100 people are in the room, you’ll get 100 people to raise their hands.

But when you ask those people to share their experiences with growth, explain how well they have performed in actually growing their companies and if they’re hitting their revenue goals month over month, you get a much different picture.

Probably more like 10% to 20% of those people have actually figured out how to grow their companies.

Where is the disconnect?

It seems like everyone knows how to grow companies (and certainly how to help you grow yours). Every marketing agency, website shop, sales consultant, demand gen firm and guy with an iPhone appears to have the answer to your growth challenges.

Yet the data shows that hardly anyone is delivering on this month-over-month revenue growth goal. Again, I’ll ask: What’s the problem?

Here’s the scary truth that not many people want to talk about.

It Takes Companywide Transformation

Today, revenue growth is an entire company initiative. It’s not marketing, it’s not sales and it’s not just customer service. It’s everyone. That means everyone in the entire company must be on the same page.

Everyone has to understand the goals, the initiatives, the commitment, the focus, the strategy, the tactics, the metrics and the technology needed to drive revenue.

Everyone has to be willing to help, everyone has to support it and everyone has to be able to articulate it. If you have even one person thinking it’s going to fail, even one person who tried to warn you not to do it or even one person who is a naysayer, your revenue goals are at risk.

To do this right, you will need everyone activated and empowered to do what’s necessary to build the strategy, execute the tactics, track the metrics and use the technology required to install the revenue generation machine required to get you to your revenue growth goals.

It Takes A Lifelong Commitment (Or At Least 3 Years)

This is not a short-term plan.

Revenue growth is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. It’s going to take stamina. If you think this is something you try for three months to see how it works, don’t even bother. Save your money and keep doing what you’ve been doing.

What the experts won’t tell you is how long it’s going to take. Any guesses they make are simply that — wild-ass guesses. What they should be able to tell you is what your end game looks like. They should be able to show you what your business needs to look like to hit your revenue goals. They should be able to show you the plan on how you get there.

What they might not know is how long it’s going to take, and that’s because the variable is you. Some companies get there faster than planned, while others take longer. This almost always depends on you and your team.

You should be thinking about this in terms of years (three years to start, but more accurately, every year). You should never go back to the old ways. You should always push forward, trying new and innovate ways to improve performance. You’re learning a new way, so make sure you’re committed to spending the time required to get comfortable with the new way.

It Takes Investment

This is not cheap. You don’t want it to be cheap. If it was cheap, everyone would do it. Instead, only the smartest companies with the most visionary leaders who see the future and want their companies to be part of it spend the money and invest the time to create these fast-growing companies.

This is not where you choose the cheapest agency. This isn’t where you choose the middle of three options because you don’t want to be cheap but also don’t want to overpay. This is where you should be looking for the agency, consultants, advisors or guides who have the most confidence, the most experience and the richest pipeline so they can charge the most — and be 100% comfortable standing behind their delivery.

Ask them to guarantee it. Anyone who is not prepared to have this conversation with you doesn’t have the confidence in their own abilities, nor do they have the experience and ability to create reasonable expectations around the desired results with you.

Invest heavily in the people who have done it before. Whether in-house or outsourced, it doesn’t matter, but make the investment required to reshape your entire business.

It Takes Trust

With these types of initiatives, trust is at the core of the entire process. You have to trust yourself, your own judgement, your partners, your team, and the processes and methodologies you’re executing.

This trust has to be steadfast and cannot waver.  

If you’re not going to trust the people you hire, don’t hire them.

If you don’t trust the methodology, find another methodology.

If you don’t trust that revenue growth is the top priority, the major initiative and the focus of your company, you shouldn’t invest any money or any time in driving revenue — just keep doing what you’ve been doing and hope it works out. 

It Takes Strategy, Tactics, Analytics And Technology

To grow revenue month over month today, you’re looking at a complex set of highly orchestrated tactics built on a foundation of strategy, with highly specific metrics to gauge success and the software to execute this ongoing set of deliverables.

You’re looking at execution that never stops and never sleeps. It runs every day, regardless of the day.

You have to plan more than ever before. You have to automate as much as possible. You need to analyze data against expected performance and apply a methodology of continuous improvement to optimize daily, weekly and monthly. Revenue growth is like no initiative you’ve ever tackled before.

The revenue growth initiative will not work if you don’t have all of the following in place:

• Sales, marketing and customer service alignment
• Marketing, CRM and customer service technology
• An overarching strategy around the messaging, stories and ability to deliver those stories
• A clear differentiation vs. your competitors

You need the right set of tactics spread from marketing into sales and through customer service, built to provide your prospects and customers the most remarkable experience.

You need the metrics to measure performance and a team that can quickly get insights from those metrics, create an action plan as a result of those insights and execute to plan — every single month.

It’s a highly complicated effort, which is why finding people who have done this before often provides the shortcut required to get up and running quickly, reducing the mistakes and rework required when you try to figure this out on your own.

It Takes A Proven Methodology

Companies that do this all of the time should be able to offer a methodology, like the Cyclonic Buyer Journey™ model, for you to follow. This means you don’t have to figure it all out from scratch. This should mean you get access to best practices, people who have the experiences you need and the ability to not have to learn on the job.

This should produce better results in less time. This should produce a team that knows how to work together. This should produce a more efficient program, which translates into more results and less effort.

When you look at everything included here, it’s some heavy lifting. It’s going to take strong leadership and new plays. You’ll need to put old paradigms and ideas aside, and instead try new ways of executing. It might require new people, new processes and new tools. How many of you are up for doing anything it takes?

What about the rest of the people at your company? Are they ready to do what it takes? Even if it’s hard? Even if it might mean their jobs change? Even if it means that if they don’t have the right attitude they should move on?

If revenue growth is your goal, you have to be willing to put everything aside to champion that goal.

If people on your team doubt the new ways, pine for keeping things the same or don’t want to change, your journey is doomed before it starts.

If you think this is a goal that you can attain by cutting corners, saving money or going for the cheapest option, you’ll never get there.

If you think your current team (which has not figured it out yet) can still figure it out on their own, you’ll never get there.

If you think this is a single department’s challenge, you’ll never get there.

If you think this is something that has taken years to create but can be fixed in just 30 days or even 90 days, you’ll never get there.

No one wants to tell you how hard this is going to be, how long it’s going to take and how much investment it’s going to require. That’s the scary truth. No one is telling you this not because they’re hiding it but rather because they know it’s hard and they don’t know the answers to those key questions. No one does.

Over the past 15 years (now almost 16 years), we’ve seen clients transform their businesses and get amazing results. We’ve also seen clients get modest results or no results at all.

Here are just a few of the success stories:

• Blue Mountain Recycling – SOLD for millions of dollars
• SOLitude Lake Management – SOLD for millions of dollars
• Rittenhouse Builders – Launched new division, 500% growth
• Home Helpers – Franchise of the year, top-performing franchise
• Miller Welding – Over $1 million in new revenue generated
• Action Duplication – 30 leads a month to 300 leads a month in just six months
• Legacy Navigator – 15 leads a month to 150 leads a month in just four months

Why do some achieve greatness while others falter?

The answer lies in the comments above. CEOs and business leaders: If you truly want to grow, you have to leave the old ways behind and burn your boats. You have to invest in the future and trust the experts you hire to get you there. 

You have to support these new initiatives and get your teams to support them as well. You have to lead your people to push past that feeling of being uncomfortable and try the new plays, lean into the new technology and accept that to grow there will be pain.

“Leaders get the teams they deserve.” — Rand Stagen, Stagen Leadership Academy

If you want your company to perform at a higher level, and if you want to generate better results, you’re going to have to lead your people to think and act differently.