A year ago we took a decision to take a more strategic look at what we do, and how to move forward. We worked with a coach through the Growth Accelerator programme to redefine our processes and build a growth plan for the company. I expected our main focus would be to identify new things that we could do to get more business and drive growth. Whilst it did this, the really interesting outcome was identifying things that we were doing that were actually holding us back.
It was the decision to stop doing peripheral things and focus on our core that really made the positive impact on our business.
As with many SME businesses, we never wanted to miss an opportunity. When a client or prospect came to us and asked “Can you do….” our answer was usually “Yes”. We would then bend over backwards, to deliver for the client (something we are quite good at!), but at what cost to BSA? The next requirement would regularly be something different, so the process would repeat. We were sustaining a level of turnover, and we were very busy, but we had no capacity to grow. It was at that point we stood back and said “What do we do well?”. Let’s stop doing other stuff and focus on that.
"Our core deliverable is helping clients get their message out to qualified target markets and actually 'knock on doors' to secure real business opportunities".
Where other things are needed to support this activity, we work with expert partners. Our focus is to deliver real benefit for our clients. The result is that 12 months down the line we are delivering more effectively and we have had the time to strategically build capabilities which means that our service is even more joined-up and beneficial!
The moral of the story:
"The key to success is understanding what adds value to your business, stop doing everything else to focus on this"
For interest, the inspiration for this post came from an article on LinkedIn “12 Myths that Lead to a Busy, Unfulfilling Life“. Although I don’t agree with all of them, the principal is sound and well worth a read!
