Five Ingredients to Build a High-Performance Growth Organization

Most companies we’ve worked with have the potential to become high-performance growth organizations (HPGOs). That’s because what’s outside their control – such as product/market fit and industry growth -- is typically positive and their areas for development are within their control. The ball, in short, is in their court.

So why doesn’t everyone just build a growth engine? The short answer is that it’s hard. The longer answer is that one or more of the ingredients that lead to success are missing. In this blog, we’ll explore five ingredients required to grow from $3-6m in ARR to $15m+.

1. Operational readiness: Will you be operationally ready for growth in six months?

You don’t need to wait for your operations or technology to be ‘perfectly ready’ for growth. That’s never going to happen. That said, if there are major operational hurdles in your way, you’re better off smoothing those out before focusing on growth. Partly, that’s because you run the risk of making a poor first impression on potential and existing customers that can be difficult to overcome. You may burn out your team in the process. More practically, companies and CEOs – when they’re in constant fire-fighting mode – struggle to dedicate enough time and mental bandwidth to the difficult task of building a sales engine. Be honest with yourself, and your team, about when you’re ready to start scaling.

2. Intimate understanding of your customers: Who are your ideal customers? Why and how do they buy?

You’d be surprised at how often companies have internal myths about why customers buy that don’t match with reality. Or how often the rationale for their sales process is: ‘this is the way we’ve always done it’. You must intimately understand three things:

a. Who your ideal customers are (ICP): Who gains the most from your solution? How do you find and assess prospects? How do you know when it’s time to cut a lead?

b. What they care about (value): What burning platform problem do you solve for them? Why do they pick you over others? What value do they get from your solution over time? Why do good customers sometimes not pick you?

c. How they purchase (map the purchase process): What are the right steps, and complexity required, to appropriately buy your solution? Which stakeholders need to be involved, and when? What are the hinge moments during that journey? It helps to reframe your sales process as your customer’s buying process and consider what process is most valuable to them.

There’s a simple test to assess whether you have (roughly) the right process. During a discovery call, walk the prospect through your process stages. Can you clearly explain the journey – and why it’s good for them – in less than 3 minutes? Do they buy your process?

3. CEO focus and engagement How can you, as CEO, dedicate at least 20% of your time to building an HPGO?

We’ve yet to see a company build a high-performance growth engine without extensive involvement from the CEO. Dedicating less than 20% of your time to driving sales-process transformation will materially lower your chances of success. If you have a partner, this requirement is easier to fulfill, as one of you may focus 50%+ of your time on sales. If you don’t have a partner, you’ll need to figure out how you can carve out that time. That typically involves hiring elsewhere in your organization so that you can spend more time on sales, and/ or using a generalist – such as a Chief of Staff – to help extend your reach.

What should you be doing with that time? See our post ‘Six Jobs that CEOs have in Driving a Sales Transformation.

4. The right supporting cast: Do you have the right team and resources to execute?

Building an HPGO requires a diverse skillset. It’s rare that a VP of Sales – or a CEO acting as VP of Sales – is good at all the jobs required. These include, to name a few: (i) project management, (ii) process design, (iii) customer interviews and surveys, (iv) content creation, (v) setting up and maintaining technical tools (e.g., HubSpot), (vi) hiring salespeople, and (vii) coaching team members.

High potential companies typically use a combination of a VP of Sales, marketing support, a junior sales operations lead and/or a temporary generalist, such as a Chief of Staff or MBA intern. Different approaches can work – what’s critical is that the jobs get done well.

5. The process mindset: Do you—and your team—want to build sales processes?

You can’t build an HPGO without process. And building process takes time and a willingness to experiment. Many salespeople – who are ‘artists’ who sell through force of personality – don’t really believe in process. The right mindset features an entrepreneurial bias to action, a willingness to iterate, and a belief that the destination is worth the journey –that process can, and should, be the way the organization is run. That said, you shouldn’t expect your sales leader to be great at building a process on their own – they’ll need help and that’s OK. The key: they must be willing to take the journey with you.

In closing, building a High Performance Growth Engine, is a continuous process. As you work through it, we challenge you, from time to time, to do a pre-mortem. If your sales efforts were to falter, which missing ingredients would be the most likely culprits? Start there.