Over the past few months, I’ve had the privilege of leading many management teams through Revenue Growth Workshops to make a plan to drive organic revenue growth. My favorite companies to work with are ones that use Gino Wickman’s EOS (Entrepreneur’s Operating System) Traction methodology to run their business.
Several years ago at Convergo, we realized that we needed a way to align our growing team. With more people on board, things were falling through the cracks. Team members, clients, and vendors were starting to get frustrated.
I don’t remember how I found the book, Traction. What I do remember is seeing an endorsement from Rob Dube, President of Image One, at the beginning of the book. This got my attention! We devoured the book and grabbed on to EOS and it began transforming our company.
Since then, we’ve met many office technology dealers and managed IT companies that use Traction to improve their business. Our friends at Great America Financial Services even coach dealers in how to implement Traction.
When it comes to building and executing a Revenue Growth Strategy, Traction companies are a great fit for five reasons:
1. They Have Written Goals
The EOS process challenges companies to write goals on 10-year, 3-year, 1-year, and 90-day horizons. Traction companies know where they want to go. This is recorded on their VTO (Vision Traction Organizer). When it comes time to make a revenue growth plan, the 3-year revenue goals are documented and agreed upon. This stands in contrast to other dealers whose goals are less specific: “We’d like to get to 15 million.” Goals are dreams with a deadline. Traction companies have real growth goals.
2. They Have Defined Values
When working closely alongside a client’s marketing and sales teams, it’s important that there is value alignment. When we work with Traction companies, we know what their values are. We are also transparent about our values. If there isn’t value alignment, we know up front and can recommend the company find marketing and sales enablement partners that fit their culture. If there is alignment, we can walk in with confidence, knowing our teams will work well together.
3. They Understand Incremental Improvement
Rome wasn’t built in a day. Neither is a great Revenue Growth Strategy. When it comes time to implement a plan, Traction recommends companies chunk their improvement activities into 90-day rocks. This means that every 90 days the company will focus on getting a few things done rather than trying to do everything at once. Once one rock is in place, you go on to the next one. We deliver marketing and sales enablement services in 90-day sprints.
4. They Appreciate Change Management and Coaching
Traction companies seem to appreciate the reality that you don’t just tell your team about a change and expect them to adopt it. Change needs to be managed. New ways of doing things need a change management plan. They need to be rolled out strategically. And, they need ongoing coaching. For example, when we roll out a Target Account Coverage Plan, it takes more than building some prospecting sequences and doing some Fanatical Prospecting training. There needs to be ongoing coaching of the reps and the management team to make sure the new process sticks. When there is no change management plan or ongoing coaching, the investment is wasted, and even worse, the opportunities are missed.
5. They Value Scorecards
Traction taught us to measure leading indicators. Our key metric with our Revenue Growth Strategy clients is a little different than most marketing companies or sales training partners. We track our client’s revenue growth: number of customers and revenue per customer. Then, we scorecard four key leading indicators related to net-new and cross-selling. (We can explain more when we talk.) The thing we like about working with Traction companies is that they are used to scorecards.
There are many more benefits to working with Traction companies. Their management teams communicate regularly and are on the same page. They are used to honest conversation. They have a cascading message strategy to communicate the vision with their team. Most of all, when a company uses Traction, we know that they are committed to working together to drive profitable growth.
If you use Traction, we’d love to talk with you about how you can build a plan to drive revenue growth. Click here to set up a confidential conversation.
If you don’t use Traction, we encourage you to check it out. It’s an incredibly valuable tool that can help you build a great company.
For more growth ideas, check out this article: Consistent Execution: The Secret To Revenue Growth
Originally published on Convergo.
