The Five Growth Plays: Bring Clarity to Your Revenue Growth Strategy
When it comes to revenue growth, what separates the leaders from the laggards?
It’s not your products or services. It’s not your people. And it’s not your leadership.
The real difference is the ability—or inability—to execute on that growth strategy. And the number one concern we hear from commercial leaders right now is uncertainty about their ability to execute.
In fact, only 45 percent of CEOs are confident in their team’s ability to execute on their growth strategy, according to Sales Benchmark Index. That means that 55 percent—the majority—are not!
How do you close that confidence gap?
execute your growth strategy with clarity and confidence
It’s a case of good intentions, but wrong instincts. Most companies follow so-called “best practices” to develop and execute their plans because it’s all they know.
But a winning strategy is actually the sum total of things you might not be thinking about—that is:
Your growth plays—the specific initiatives you need to launch to address your top revenue challenges.
Your growth levers—the focus areas that will have the most immediate and profound impact on your performance.
Your growth teams (all of them, not just sales)—the people you rely on to transform growth into a truly cross-functional effort.
A single deviation in any of these three areas could lead to a wildly different outcome and, ultimately, a failure to pull off the strategy you’ve worked so hard to build.
prioritize your growth plays
The five growth plays represent specific initiatives you can launch to address your most pressing revenue challenges. Each growth play can have an outsized impact on your revenue growth, but each one requires a distinct approach.
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identify your growth levers
Once you prioritize your growth play, consider which growth levers you need to pull to execute that play successfully.
For example, an acquisition growth play requires different messaging and skills than an expansion growth play. And leaders need to coach differently when they want to keep profitability top of mind with their teams. You might also decide that you need specific technology, such as a customer success platform, to support your retention play.
With the right levers in place, you can keep your revenue teams focused, fast, and efficient.
enable your growth teams
Your growth strategy will only be successful if you can enable your growth teams to execute it effectively.
Marketing, sales, and customer success are all having conversations with your buyers. Field sellers and digital sellers must use distinct techniques. And you might also have non-captive channels that you need to sell through or sell with.
Every team contributes to your growth strategy, but each one has different KPIs, priorities, and needs.
close the confidence gap
When you replace “best practices” with science, you can align your approach to the way buyers actually make decisions. When you understand their subconscious, situational motivations, you can execute any growth play in the moment using the right message, skills, and technology to win that moment. And when you do all this, you’ll be able to close the gap between strategies and outcomes—leading to faster sales cycles and outsized revenue growth.