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8 minute read
For most of you, you know me as the co-founder of Square 2 (Marketing), a digital agency who was one of HubSpot’s premier partners and also as the guy who helped fellow agency owners with a small company called Agencies 2 Inbound.
For those of you who are just getting to know me, I’ve been a marketer for over 30 years. I worked in house for 10 years at major companies like Xerox, Dun & Bradstreet and Rosenbluth Travel. Then I started, grew and exited a digital agency after 20 years and for the last year or so, I’ve been doing some coaching, consulting and fractional work for a hand selected number of clients.
Over the past year or so, I’ve been spending my time digging deep into what remains one of the most significant challenges facing businesses of all shapes and sizes—scalable, predictable, revenue growth.
This challenge is especially rough for agencies and small businesses and agency owners because it’s now more difficult than ever to keep clients, to keep clients happy and to get results for clients.
It’s also extremely challenging for small businesses; companies are doing less than $20 million in annual revenue. It’s extra challenging because their lead flow is the life blood of the company and it’s harder than ever to create the machine that delivers enough leads, sales opportunities and new customers to grow these companies year over year.
Which brings me to why I’m back.
As a business owner for over 20 years, we ran our agency on EOS. It was a game changer. It provided us with a system for running the company. It provided us with rhythms, frameworks, processes, tools and techniques that we never would have been able to come up with on our own.
We also had a system for hiring people and managing the team, we used a version of the Top Grading system. That too provided tools and proven processes to follow.
Some people use Profit First to help them manage their finances and ensure they have a profitable company.
Which got me thinking. There are systems for almost every aspect of business but there’s no system for revenue. Before we go any further, let me make sure you understand, systems are NOT software. Sometimes software helps support the deployment and activation of a system. But systems are not software.
Some of you might be asking, Mike, why are you so excited about this idea of a system for revenue?
Systems work! They’ve been proven over time to help align your teams. Streamline processes. Improve efficiencies. Increase profits and build highly scalable businesses.
Gino Wickman (creator of EOS) said, “Successful business are obsessed with building a system of accountability and discipline that drives results.” (from Traction).
But no matter where I looked, there is no system for revenue.
So, I created one. Based on 30 years of experience. Based on 20 years of working with almost one thousand companies, in almost every single industry, and helping them with every revenue-related challenge under the sun. It became clear to me, if you want to grow your company, you need a system for revenue generation and overall business growth.
Which leads me to why you should care.
Agencies have been leaning on outside resources to help them differentiate and streamline their companies for years. Some are subscribers to Donald Miller’s Story Brand. Some are partners with HubSpot for technical services. Many agency owners use EOS to help them run their companies. But again, there is no system to help them get better results for their clients and there is no system to help them identify everything they need to do to scale their own revenue generation efforts.
At least until now.
Let me introduce you to the Growth Builder System™.
I want you to think about the graphic above like a map. It identifies everything you need to do and everything you need to do well and everything you must do simultaneously to drive consistent revenue growth for any business.
For my entire 30-year career, working with businesses large and small and in numerous industries, there is always one thing I see in almost every company.
They’re not looking at revenue from a holistic perspective. Instead, they’re looking at it like it’s a tactical problem.
I need more leads! We need to close better! We need to keep our clients! We need a marketing automation system! We don’t use our CRM! We don’t have a sales process! We don’t get enough referrals! It takes too long to close new business! We don’t like our agency! The tactical thinking is rampant across all industries and all types of businesses.
It’s my theory that this thinking is preventing most companies from thinking differently about their revenue challenges. Today, business leaders and agency owners need to start thinking about systems, instead of tactics.
The Growth Builder System™ allows you to assess everything across the business and see what’s working and what’s not working. It gives you a framework to make sure nothing is missed.
Then the Growth Builder System™ allows you to apply the framework and prioritize those areas that need the most immediate attention. Perhaps it’s the sales process, maybe it’s the marketing strategy, or it could be that clients just aren’t happy enough to be advocates for the business.
When you expand the elements of the Growth Builder System™, you quickly see very specific areas that typically need attention.
Each of these bulleted lists within the Growth Builder System™ needs to be worked on as part of creating a scalable, predictable, and repeatable revenue generation effort.
You can assess your progress toward having an effective revenue growth system by reviewing your efforts in each of these areas.
Marketing
In the marketing area, you have to tell an emotional, compelling, and exciting story to get everyone’s attention. You need to have a business that is remarkable, which means you’re saying things and doing things that NO ONE else is saying or doing. You need to have looked at the investment level and aligned it with expected results. This is critical to making sure you don’t need 100 leads a week, but you’re only budgeted to generate 10.
You need to be running enough marketing tactics to get you to your lead goals. You need to be running the right tactics, and you absolutely need an orchestration process to ensure all your marketing tactics are working together and not as stand-alone tactics.
You need to have the right analytics, the right optimization processes, and the right expertise to analyze and run your companies so that they improve week after week and that your team is able to uncover the insights buried in the data and use those insights to inform their ongoing action plans.
Sales
No matter how many leads marketing generates, if you can’t close those leads, revenue growth is going to struggle.
Your sales strategy needs to ensure you have the right people, the right compensation, and the right sales goals in place.
You’re going to need a sales process that helps your prospects feel safe with your salespeople, products/services, and your company. This process needs to create an experience for your prospects, and this process needs to be visually documented, so it’s followed by ALL.
Just like marketing, you need to have the right analytics, the right optimization processes, and the right expertise to analyze and run your sales process so that it improves week after week and that your team is able to uncover the insights buried in the data and use those insights to inform upgrades and updates to the sales process.
Delivery
If you can’t take care of your customers or clients, you can’t grow your business. Delivery is just as important as marketing and sales, but it rarely gets the same attention when it comes to revenue.
Client/customer strategy includes how you go about retaining your clients, how you expand your share of wallet, both cross-sell and upsell, and perhaps most importantly, how you activate your customer, so they’re advocates for your business. Advocates actively tell your story for you, without being asked. How many of your current clients are actually advocates for your business?
To ensure they’re advocates, you have to proactively communicate with them, create a customer experience worth talking about, and they need support that is top-notch, should they need it.
And just like marketing and sales, you need the right analytics, the right optimization processes and the right expertise to analyze and evaluate your customer delivery so that it improves week after week and that your team is able to uncover the insights buried in the data and use those insights to inform upgrades and updates to how you delight your customer, keep them longer, and sell them more.
Growth Operations
It’s impossible to do everything you need to do from a marketing, sales, and customer delivery perspective without technology. Today, you need to automate and analyze everything, so you need a tech stack built around revenue.
You need marketing automation, you need a CRM for sales, and you need a customer support system to take care of your customers. You also need to treat your customer and prospect database as if it’s your most precious corporate asset. This means it’s accurate, clean, and curated on a regular basis. Last but not least, you need to make sure that any disparate systems are integrated, and data is flowing back and forth correctly. All these tools need to be working flawlessly across your organization so that you have the right data to make the best decisions, in real time.
AI-Powered Tool Kit
How can the Growth Builder System NOT include AI? This part of the business world is redefining how business gets done, and revenue is at the center of this technological revolution.
The Growth Builder System™ helps you start using AI to create content more efficiently, to optimize campaign performance, to deliver sales and customer service agents that enhance both prospect and customer experiences. Finally, AI should be deployed to make sure you’re targeting the right prospects and the right customers with the perfect message at the perfect time.
Without AI applied properly, your system will likely underperform.
Once you can check ALL these boxes and the company is executing on these 37 core areas, you’ll start to realize each month you’re not hitting but exceeding your revenue goals.
But a system isn’t simply a pretty picture like the ones above. A system comes with tools, frameworks, shortcuts, templates, and models that help you install, practice, and leverage the system to produce results.
What Tools Come With The Growth Builder System™
For those of you who use EOS, you know its toolkit includes incredibly valuable tools like the People Analyzer, the 8 Cash Flow Drivers, Rocks, Scorecards, the Level 10 Meeting, and more. Once you start using these tools, your overall business operations pick up speed, efficiency improves, and overall results tend to follow.
The Growth Builder System™ has a similar tool kit.
Here are some of the tools and how they’re applied to helping you improve revenue growth.
The Big Story Creator™ Tool – this tool helps you create your Big Story, the words that help you in just 10 seconds get your prospects emotionally engaged with your business.
The Revenue Cycle Modeler™ – this tool helps you analyze your current revenue status and quickly see where you need to improve to hit your stated revenue goals. This tool helps you target those specific areas that need immediate attention.
The Prospect Buyer Journey Mapper™ - this tool helps you identify each step your prospects are going through as they decide whether to purchase from you or your competitors. Knowing this helps you create better marketing, sales, and customer service experiences so you’re the obvious choice for your prospects.
The Sales Process Design Checklist and the Sales Process Map Template – If you don’t have a documented and visual sales process, you don’t have a sales process at all. These two tools help you build out a sales process that creates a remarkable experience for your prospects. This is how you shorten your sales cycle and increase your close rates.
Technology Grader – You’re going to need a tech stack to do this right. There is so much that needs to be automated and analyzed; you can’t build a scalable revenue generation system without technology. But which ones are right for you? The Technology Grader gives you a tool to evaluate software and make sure you get the right one for you and your company.
These five tools and the other 19 tools, frameworks, templates, and documents make using the Growth Builder System™ easy to use and easy to implement at your company.
If this sounds like a system that could help your agency attract more clients, retain more clients, get clients better results, extend your engagements with current clients, and help your agency grow beyond your expectations, the next step is simple.
Just sign up to get our weekly newsletter. It’s free, with no obligation, just helpful information about the system, the challenges facing agencies, and the process for taking your business to the next level. Sign up today.
