Sustainable business growth depends on having a clear plan and the financial and operational insights to support it. As your business grows, it becomes much more complex. The growing pains you might be experiencing often signal that your infrastructure and processes need to evolve, too.
To adjust, you need a practical framework and expert guidance that helps you figure out how and what to fix and prepares you for the future. To solve this challenge, consider the four foundational pillars of sustainable business growth as you start to form your roadmap.
Business Growth Pillar 1: Great Quality Product/Service
What matters most is what you deliver to your customers. Nothing will harm customer relationships more than reduced quality.
When quality slips, it can cause all sorts of problems, including the loss of customer trust, employee dissatisfaction and turnover, lower sales, and decreased confidence in your company, both internally and externally.
To ensure high quality, consistently look at your existing products and services. Key organizational questions to ask include:
- Would our customers recommend our company to their family, friends, and connections?
- Would our employees recommend us as a place to work?
- Do our salespeople sell all our products? If not, what do they avoid selling and why?
- Do we meet the deadlines we communicate to our customers?
- Does the product/service consistently meet or exceed the customer’s needs?
An introspective approach to management and product/service delivery is key when looking to sustain growth. Top-quality products and services keep your customers and employees in place because everyone wants to be part of a winning team. Your customers want to work with a successful vendor that provides high-quality products and/or services, and your salespeople are far more successful when they believe in the product they are selling. This flows throughout the entire chain between customer and employee.
Business Growth Pillar 2: Hiring and Retaining Top Talent
For a business to sustain its growth, it needs to continually invest in its people, provide autonomy to high performers, and take care not to disrespect top talent. Far too often, employers lose top talent due to nickel-dime management. As in life, employee relationships cannot be one-sided. If you want your top performers to keep delivering outstanding results, you need to treat them well and show them you value their contributions.
To assess how well you are attracting and retaining talent, ask yourself the following questions:
- Would your top performers recommend your company as a great place to work to their friends/family/business connections?
- Have you recently lost any high performers? Remember: Smart employees do not burn bridges, so their measured answers in an exit interview probably provide only 20% of the story.
- Does the organization show loyalty toward its long-time employees or is it great at attracting, but not retaining, employees?
- Does the organization delay or avoid dealing with non-performers, causing top performers to pick up the slack?
Business Growth Pillar 3: Strategic Planning
Strategic planning helps set your company’s direction for real growth and long-term success. Instead of only reacting to things as they happen, it pushes you to move forward with intention. By holding regular strategy meetings, teams stay focused and have a clear plan for making the most of your resources and growing in a sustainable way.
When you hold strategy sessions, you’re getting leaders on the same page about priorities, tradeoffs, risks, decisions, progress, and company-wide goals. These sessions are the perfect time to clarify your mission and vision, set clear priorities, develop goals, review how resources and teams are allocated, plan tax strategies, discuss potential risks, and track performance to see if you need to adjust anything.
Beyond setting the strategy, sharing the company’s vision and direction makes your team feel included and valued. With strategic planning, employees are empowered to make everyday decisions that align with your long-term goals.
Business Growth Pillar 4: Strong Customer/Client Relationships
Building strong customer relationships is essential for sustained growth. Keeping your current customers happy is much easier, and more cost-effective, than trying to win over new ones. Ask yourself how you’re showing appreciation to your clients right now.
- Are you truly connecting with them? In some industries, like banking, relationship-building is almost a requirement, and it’s common to invite clients to events or lunches. Are you doing something similar for your best customers?
- What makes you and your business stand out? People naturally want to be part of something successful, and, above all, they want to feel valued. Investing time in genuine, personal interactions with your clients is what turns a good business into a great one. Regularly assess how much effort you are putting into nurturing those authentic relationships.
Support for Your Growing Pains
The growth stage has its hiccups, but investing in advisory support allows you to work with industry experts who have seen hundreds of thriving — and struggling — companies and can help serve as guardrails against mistakes that could inhibit your company’s growth.
Mowery & Schoenfeld works with companies across industries to assess the areas where they are feeling strained and how to best evolve. We are business-focused and understand not only tax, accounting, and M&A, but also what allows a business to grow and succeed.
We believe the best way for M&S to be successful is to have successful clients. We work with you to spot risks, track performance metrics, and adjust your plans as your business grows. With decades of experience, Mowery & Schoenfeld is a trusted partner to help you through these challenges by taking a thoughtful, financially sound approach to managing growth.