Reignite: How Everyday Companies Spark Next Stage Growth
In today’s fast-paced market, leaders are experiencing challenges that don’t respond to yesterday’s solutions; long-term customers are buying less, margins are tightening, and the pressure is building. Leaders face more game-changing decisions in a shorter time span. The choices they make at this critical time will either reignite growth or condemn them to business gravity. Reignite provides many pragmatic examples and tools that help executives, managers, and leaders see opportunity through a different lens, so they can discover the profitable connection between market needs and their organization’s unique capabilities.
About Margaret Reynolds
Margaret Reynolds is the founder and owner of Breakthrough Masters Unlimited, a division of Reynolds Consulting, LLC. Reynolds is a recognized expert at helping middlemarket companies identify and implement nextstage growth. Reynolds, whose first career chapter included senior leadership at Hallmark Cards, is also the author of Reignite: How Everyday Companies Spark Next Stage Growth.
Referenced Resources in this Book
14 Things Every Growth-Oriented Business Needs to Know About Their Customer
Most of us know a lot about our customers–or do we? We certainly know who they are and which ones are a pain in the you-know-what. We may know what they order, how fast they pay and maybe we know the buyers favorite sports team. But do we know enough to make good decisions about how to manage the entire customer portfolio to maximize productivity and profitability?
Templates & Worksheets
Product Analysis Workbook
As part of the Discovery process in the 3D Breakthrough Solution, you will want to study the effectiveness of products in the portfolio. This excel program takes you through the variables you need to input and helps you analyze the results. It includes: o Identifying and defining product categories price range, growth rates, and gross margins. Results in a product category analysis so that you can understand the role each plays in your strategy for success.
Customer Analysis Worksheet
As part of the Discovery process and before you begin to determine who the appropriate target customer is for your organization, you need to understand the current customer segments; specifically which customers are contributing to success and which ones are not.
This excel program will help you understand:
- The source of revenue by customer type
- Customer trends in buying behavior
- Customer profitability
- The dynamics and impact of new and lost customers
- Key customer characteristics
- Provides the results that helps you determine target customers later in the 3D Breakthrough Solution process
Target Customer Criteria Template
Selecting a target audience is an important step in clarifying your company strategy. All customers are not created equal. Discover how to segment customers and allocate resources to them so that you maximize the return on your limited resources.
Communication Plan
A leader cannot over communicate. After a comprehensive evaluation of where the company should be going, the entire employee group is on edge waiting for the unveiling. They want to know what is going to change and what is expected of them. This important template ensures the communication is planned just as thoughtfully as everything else and no balls are dropped that can hurt the outcome.
Dashboard Measures
Every company needs a short list of leading indicators that track strategic execution. This form shows you how to identify the measures that reflect your company’s strategy and the value of doing so.
Project Action Plan
This excel spread sheet format builds a plan that allows leadership to have a hand on the rudder but every team to be in the know—what is being done by whom and when. Clarity and alignment create speed in implementation!
Sample Ranking Sheet
This ranking sheet will help you decide how many initiatives your organization has the resources to accommodate and do well! It may be 3 or it may be 10 but it is probably not all of them. Once you have prioritized them and determined which ones to get underway, the other ideas aren’t lost, just delayed a bit until the most important are completed and resources are freed up. This prevents the temptation to overcommit due to enthusiasm and avoids the most common cause of failure.
Project Summary Template
One step often overlooked in the building of a strategic action plan is the vetting of the ideas that have surfaced in the process. Today, the average company gets a return on only one out of every four initiatives. Why? They don’t study them enough to know how much resource they will take, how much they will really impact the organization or what can derail the project. This template helps a team decide if the initiative is a go or no-go.
Decision Criteria Template
Often overlooked is the importance of establishing decision criteria. For an organization to move as quickly as today’s market demands, and to have all the moving parts work in an orchestrated fashion, the decision making needs to be dispersed throughout the organization. For leaders in different departments or divisions to make decisions independently yet consistently with the direction of the company, a common decision criterion needs to be established. This template helps you build the criteria that supports the overall direction of your organization.