The 2 X Business Growth Jigsaw – How Many P’s? 10 And Counting…

Having been brought up over much of our corporate careers on a diet of aggressive growth, breakthrough approaches, innovative ways of market creation or changing the rules of the game and striving for market leadership with a no excuses strategy and a data and analytics driven decision making approach it became over time a part of the DNA.

This has not only became a natural style but also a style that got passed on the leadership levels down the line over the years in a way that it became part of the DNA of many other leaders too.

As we moved into the current avatar in the past 5 years of helping smaller organisations and entrepreneurs scale up faster than they ever had done before it was quite natural and easy to spot the bottlenecks and the change levers and the right buttons needed for a 2x growth which ever is the industry.

Many of the approaches went beyond what is traditionally taught in B Schools as the P’s of Marketing and were more experiential in nature to give more holistic approach to rapid fire business scaling up that went beyond just the marketing domain.

Contrary to the traditional 4P’s of Marketing which is normally advocated our experiences with corporates and Entrepreneurs across the spectrum showed us that we needed to delve much deeper into the heart and soul of the organization and the specific industry and find newer ways to penetrate and gain share of market or wallet, but in a planned and deliberate manner.

As a Strategy for 2 X plus growth we always try and cover the 10 P’s listed below ( and a few more at the end )

Product: Pack configuration, mix, localization.

Place: A,B,C category towns, international to help increase the spread.

Pricing positioning: Premium, competitive or breakthrough as the situation demands.

Promotion: POS visibility, schemes, online and social media, events, Proposal quality ….

People: Employee communication, Incentives, clear targets, alignment with goals, clear JDs and competency assessments, motivation and recognition, clear productivity norms and better quality of hiring.

Policies: Terms of trade, HR and Channel policies and Schemes that increase throughput and Productivity

Processes & Project management: Improved efficiency, delivery, quality and measures that focus on the consumer or client satisfaction and not on internal capability or limitations or buck passing.

Possibilities & Purpose: Untapped opportunities, competition successes and benchmarks, new segments, new products, new geographies, new variants in line with the Vision and Purpose why the organization exists.

Partnerships: Effectively building size, spread and scale through collaborations and relationship building.

Proof: Client testimonials, videos, reference sales, strong word of mouth that can be the best advocates of the brand

Our experience shows that even if the traditional 1st 4 areas are fine or ok, the next 6 can drag an organization down and become a justification for lower sales from the teams. Half the battle is lost in many organisations when the leadership and the teams down the line just miss that connect and shared belief that the goals are really achievable.

Leadership teams that address all these 10 critical P’s can in our opinion benefit significantly from a much stronger foundation for 2X growth and more importantly win the confidence from the front line teams and partners that the organization has got its priorities and focus clear on converting their visions and dreams into reality.

Once these 10 Ps are in place then come the other softer but critical P’s needed – Passion, Persistence, Professionalism, Profit focus and Personal branding of the leaders that drive credibility internally and externally in the market place that this is the place to be in or invest in or buy from.