Strategies are situationally dependent, to some extent. In other words, strategies come and go depending on the market situation or how the company is doing. Benefits for customers that outshine the competition, core competences and outstanding strategy implementation remain the key requirements for sustained growth and success. Here, we present three popular strategies to help your company grow successfully.
Strategy 1: Portfolio Management
Numerous companies earn nothing from a large proportion of their customers. You’ve doubtless heard this before – and academic studies have proved it: in many companies, around a third of all customers generate hardly any profit, even though half of all the marketing resources are directed at these barely profitable customers.
Successful companies therefore focus on selected customers and use good relationship management and cross-selling to achieve significant growth. The following elements of the strategy are particularly crucial:
- Carefully selecting profitable customers
- Carving out and maintaining advantages over competitors
- Focusing marketing and sales spending on profitable customers
- Optimising external and internal marketing tools on an ongoing basis
These strategies require extensive information on the existing customer pool and potential new customers. A well-managed customer database is the only way to gradually improve relationship management and enable a greater focus on profitable customers, who are particularly important for the company.
Strategy 2: Development And Optimisation Of Offers
A key success factor for companies is the regular development of new products and the optimisation of existing products and services, Innovation management based on clear goals defines the role that new products and services are intended play in the company’s growth. Companies with core competences in product development and innovation will have the most success. A core competence is a skill that customers see as beneficial and that competitors would find hard to imitate.
Strategy 3: Channel Management
Sustainable growth begs the key question as to how products and services can best be presented to customers. In order to grow, companies need to generate more sales using their own sales channels, or using new approaches. Here, successful companies pursue effective strategies by recognising the needs of specific target groups and then targeting their sales channels to meet these needs. Well-matched partnerships and collaborations can reduce sales costs by outsourcing sales to partners that can address certain customer segments faster and more effectively.
There are three successful approaches to sales channel management:
- Innovators who find and tap into new channels between producers and customers
- Companies who discontinue costly, inefficient channels and generate higher profit margins as a result
- Companies who work with existing distribution partners to achieve greater efficiency
Targeted analysis and controlling measures serve to safeguard consistent implementation.
