Recently I had the pleasure of speaking before the FEI Kansas City Chapter (Financial Executives International) about 10x breakthrough growth. What a great group!
During the session, there was three main questions about how to apply the GrowthDNA principles to their businesses. Here are those frequently asked questions and the answers to them. Perhaps you have been asking yourself the same things!
1. If you want to achieve breakthrough growth, where do you start?
You start with ConfidenceDNA, the first strand of GrowthDNA. Confidence, of course, comes from having great data. Specifically, comprehensive data about the external market served, with insights about what is expected and desired by today’s customers. Companies without confidence don’t push out of their comfort zones or make bold moves.
2. If we do only one thing differently to improve our profitability, what should that one thing be?
That one thing is to know the profitability of each customer, and the impact that each customer has on your organization’s profit. Knowing this allows you to allocate resources to customers who will yield the greatest return. This includes how you use people, money, systems, and processes.
3. What metrics should you be using to measure your progress towards growth? .
You need to balance metrics and incorporate more revenue metrics than expense metrics. Further, look for leading not lagging indicators. A leading indicator is predictive, showing you what your results are likely to be or in the process of being, while a lagging indicator shows you what already happened. Leading indicators help you move toward a goal—so that is what you want to track as often as possible. And here is a hint…sales and profit numbers are lagging indicators.
For a bank, assets managed and yield are lagging indicators. Leading indicators are things like number of households, or average number of services per household. Accounts with online banking is a leading indicator for retention which is a lagging indicator.
Here is a link to a linked-in post from one of the attendees as this lecture: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6627580985951219712/
Have questions of your own? Send me an email, I’d love to get you started on your own journey to breakthrough growth.