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How To Grow In the New, Global Economy

By Robert

Why do most companies struggle just to meet last year’s revenue numbers? Why do more than 500,000 U.S. businesses fail each year? Growth is a universal and perennial problem. Yet as central as growth usually is, rising energy prices and generally poor conditions have made it more essential and more difficult in 2008 than ever before.

Take manufacturing giant Proctor & Gamble, whose head of global supply, Keith Harrison, told the Financial Times in June: “It’s the toughest operating environment, clearly, that I’ve ever been in.” FT defined P&G’s situation in this eye-popping way: “P&G has forecast that its material and energy costs will increase by $2 billion in the fiscal year starting July 1.” In other words: P&G must either generate $2 billion more in revenue or cut $2 billion in costs just to stay even with this single line-item expense. That’s a mind-bogglingly steep challenge.

The central problem, which faces every business in the world today, is that no company is competing locally or nationally any more. Instead, your business, no matter its size or type, is now competing for products, people, technology, services, delivery, and finance with the businesses, mouths, governments, and cartels of other developed nations as well as powerful emerging economies.

Moreover, this new state of affairs is not a short-term technical correction, but an unprecedented, permanent shift. In the same issue of the FT, Robert Hormats and Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs International underscored burgeoning global demand: “Since 2001, the US share of world GDP fell from 34% to 28%,” they wrote, while the sum of Brazil, Russia, India and China’s GDP rose from 8% to 16%.

In sum: historic overhead structures are just that - history. They have been invalidated by sustained and unprecedented global demand for every commodity - from oil to rice to paper, from skilled labor to capital, from delivery to technology.

To overcome this destruction of your overhead structure your business must start growing immediately and grow at a much higher rate than any time in history.

If business leaders want and need to grow, why aren’t more businesses growing? There are three simple reasons:

1. Self-delusion – “This is just a temporary revenue problem – we’ll bounce back next month – surely next year will be better.”
2. Procrastination – “I’m going to create a growth plan next month – well, it’ll have to be next year because I’m just too busy now.”
3. Lack of know-how – “Truth is, and I hate to admit it, I simply don’t know how to get started – I need an easy-to-use blueprint for growth.”

If you need an easy-to-use and quick-to-implement strategic growth process, you’ve come to the right place.

These four steps, when defined in brief, insightful plain language statements, will enable you to kick-start your business’s growth:

1. WHO is my Core Customer?
2. WHAT is my Uncommon Offering:
3. HOW can I differentiate my business, so more customers will buy from me – not my competitors?
4. OWN IT! How can I use my imagination vs. my money to make my Uncommon Offering well known to my Core Customers with little or no investment in infrastructure or advertising?

Want the longer version? To learn more about creating the Growth Discovery Process for your business, read my book cover-to-cover. Click here now to order THE INSIDE ADVANTAGE, The Strategy That Unlocks the Hidden Growth in Your Business. (McGraw-Hill, November, 2007).

The new challenges your company faces may be daunting, but they’re also surmountable. The key is to find your Inside Advantage, and start growing your business.

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