2nd Key Shift: Sales to (Differentiated) Strategy

There are 4 major shifts that a startup needs to make in order to be successful in their scaling-up journey. The 2nd Shift is from focusing only on Sales, to developing a Differentiated Strategy for sustainable growth.

If growth is not consistent, even with the BEST "sales" operations, then maybe your strategy is not CLEAR, RIGHT or ALIGNED. Are you just a "better" company or are you doing something "different" for a unique and valuable position in the market?

Watch this short 4mins video that talks about this shift...

TRANSCRIPT:

Today, I want to share about the 2nd Shift: from focusing only on Sales to drive revenue, to working on a differentiated Strategy. 

Sales is only one of few executable functions of your strategy, like marketing or customer service. Sometimes, your revenue is not growing consistently even when you have the best sales operations or team because your strategy is not right, clear or aligned. 

Let me clarify, when I says “sales function”, I mean the team that is responsible for acquiring the customers, because depending on the business model, the function might have a different name. 

The Output of a Strategy is your position in the market. A great strategy will give you a unique and valuable position within a space. It's always market focused and in relation to other players. You could be in a declining, an emerging, or a fast growing market. The most exciting companies create new products and services that create new categories or space, because the market is not static.

Therefore, developing your strategy is an evolving and iterative processing of a key central idea, and unless you are doing something different, that position won't be unique or valuable. And if that market does not exist yet, then you will also need to design the category/space that the company is in. If you can't distill your strategy into one sentence, then it is not clear.

If your proposition or promise is not important or valuable to your ideal customer, and your team is not excited, nor do they have the competence to deliver it, then your strategy is not right. If you are clear on your strategy and the customer needs your proposition but they don't experience it after they buy, then your strategy is not aligned with your operations. 

Sales only solve one part of the formula, it is absolutely necessary but not sufficient. You can have a spike in sales because of a marketing campaign, a price reduction, a new feature/product, or an improvement in customer experience journey. A spike is still just a spike, sales will drop after peaking, and it's not a sustainable form of growth. 

Generating fake growth with aggressive tactics, offering freebies, or price discounts (like we have experience in the food delivery category) is just that: not real or sustainable growth. 

It might get you some temporary relief in the short term, but the pain will come back again. 

The faster you get out of denial, the more time you have to put your attention to work on the Right Strategy for long term success.

You can't get a quick fix from getting a strategy: just like your health, you can't get healthy overnight. It's about consistently applying the right diet for your body type and the right exercise that you enjoy so that you keep exercising... But, if you are in critical condition, intervention and a quick fix to survive is necessary. But let's face it, you will never get to peak health from an intervention (it is necessary but not sufficient). As a scaleup, the important but not urgent task of clarifying your strategy and iterating it over a period of time needs to become a new habit. Because unless you get clear on what the right strategy is for you, all other decisions have no criteria or anchor points to be evaluated by. It's about stepping back and making the few important decisions that take care of the hundreds of small ones.

If you don't make them, you will most probably become a just another “better” company that will spiral into never-never land. Because who remember “better”?

So, ask yourself, is your strategy clear, right or aligned?