Increasing revenue is a goal for every organization. Although this is a high priority for business leaders, many organizations lack a systematic approach to building the plan to accelerate revenue performance.
We believe that with the right approach, organizations can achieve their desired growth objectives. The right approach is an ambitious exercise that starts with taking stock of the current situation, before building the plan for the future. Here are four steps that organizations should undertake to maximize their revenue growth potential:
1. Understand your revenue’s State of the Union
Every year the President of the United States presents the State of the Union address that provides an in-depth look at the condition of the country and outlines the way forward. In a similar fashion, business leaders need to take stock of their performance on a regular basis, allowing them to understand their current sales performance and also determine the company’s sales potential. Further, this inward look will analyze products and pricing, market position, market dynamics, and market adoption. The findings need to be documented to help business leaders have a clear view of the current state of the company and help them develop a strategy for growth.
2. Understand your customers and determine how to engage with them in a relevant way
Organizations need to leverage analytics to really understand their customers, including their propensity to purchase, their potential lifetime value, and their likelihood to churn. This thorough segmentation process should be followed by an analysis of customers’ behavior patterns across different interaction points, helping the organization establish the triggers that will lead to engaging with customers with information that’s relevant to them over their preferred channel.
3. Assess your revenue readiness
This is a five-step journey:
- Dig into the sales process to understand where it is working well and where it’s not as successful.
- Look at the company’s sales management and coverage to make sure the right resources are available and are focused on the right opportunities in a cost-effective way.
- Ensure that the data is being managed well.
- Integrate sales and marketing.
- Make sure the organization has robust customer analytics that make the most out of available data to aid in the process of revenue generation.
4. Conduct a gap analysis of existing potential
Business leaders need the insight to be able to evaluate their performance against the organization’s potential for each part of the sales process, including sales cadence, lead pipeline and tracking, and evaluating the communication plan for each individual.
Going through this four-step process lets companies maximize the value of each customer opportunity while keeping costs down.
