Kristin Luck
Although there are over 100,000 results on Amazon if you type in “business growth book”, one of my top growth reads is from Tiffani Bova, Global Growth Evangelist for Salesforce and her 2018 book “Growth IQ”.
In general, I’m not a fan of referring to any growth channel as a “hack” but in truth, there are some (5 to be exact!) growth opportunities that are easier to implement than others, particularly during tough economic times….all of which Tiffani highlighted in Growth IQ.
I’m not a fan of referring to any growth channel as a “hack” but in truth, there are some (5 to be exact!) growth opportunities that are easier to implement than others.
The first is Customer Experience. I’ve written extensively about existing client growth being the easiest path to scale- and it is. You can read more about ScaleHouse’s take on “customer love” in our blog post “Show Your Customers a Little Love”.
The second “hack” is going deeper with your existing customers. This goes hand in hand with customer experience. If your clients are having an exceptional customer experience it is infinitely easier to sell them new products and services.
Next up is churn. Delivering an amazing customer experience? Have deep client relationships? Chances are you’re not worrying about churn. But for those firms that haven’t nailed the first two hacks, controlling churn is paramount. You should target for 20% or less churn in service-based businesses, 10% or less in SaaS.
Hack #4 is utilizing partnerships. Not only do partnerships open up additional sales channels, but they can also bring major sales and co-marketing opportunities.
Last, but certainly not least, is collaborative competition (what Bova refers to as “co-opetition”). It may sound counterintuitive to partner with a direct competitor but, when implemented correctly, this strategy has been shown to work time and time again. The goal of co-opetition as Bova explains is “to find synergies and common ground between competitors in the hope of growing the size of that pie.” Want an example? Look no further than Star Alliance which used a combination of partnerships, co-opetition, customer experience and customer penetration to drive growth.
Looking for more examples? Qualtrics, which recently had their IPO debut at a massive $27.3B valuation, used a combination of customer experience, partnerships and decreasing churn to drive exponential growth.
Remember, growth is never “just one thing” – it is a combination of strategies deployed over a period of time.
Interested in learning more about growth hacks that could work for your business? Reach out to us.