This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.
Every company goes through growing pains. They suck. And no matter the company size these problems will always exist. It’s just that the pains will be different as the business grows. A 300 person organization feels the same pressure that a 10 person organization does, but early stage companies don’t have the resources that a later stage company does. As a result, it’s often very easy to get caught up “in the business” without ever thinking about how to work “on the business.” So here are some easy tips that can be used to work “on the business” that I’ve found to be helpful for early stage companies:
Create and write down roles, responsibilities, and goals and then review these goals. Do it over and over again. Each week, team leaders should have one on one’s to talk about what is working and what is not, and why. If the team members can’t provide answers with data and facts, that means they are not doing the hard work of getting their hands dirty. Goals and documented responsibilities will hold everyone accountable. Without accountability, there will be complacency and complacency will lead to a slow death.
Look at the data. Spend time to segment your best customers by your most important metrics. Try to identify what the overlap looks like between those top metrics. Consider including and also removing the outliers to see what that might mean, if anything. See if the results align with any hypothesis that you might of had. And then once you have your answer, stop, and go execute. Don’t get bogged down with analysis paralysis but do enough to make you feel confident in your course of action and then aggressively attack. Stick with your instincts and if the data supports it, then great! If not, try to figure out why. I heard a story once of a company who thought all of their customers would be located in the densely populated US cities like New York and San Francisco. It turned out their customers were all in India and so they relocated the entire company.
Sell. It’s great to try to optimize the inbound and outbound marketing funnels of your business but sometimes a quick sales hack to sell something is to simply get in front of the person you want to sell and to close them. Often times old fashion ‘hustle’ is the most critical part of a business and as Mark Cuban says, “Sales Cures All,” which brings me to my next point.
Prospect and get referrals. Take time to create your top 100 customer list. Figure out who the decision makers are at those organizations. Then figure out who knows those people and can provide you with a warm introduction. This requires hustle but often times this tactic yields the highest ROI. For B2B businesses, LinkedIn is a powerful tool here. For B2C businesses, Facebook and Twitter can be pretty powerful.
Create urgency in the organization. One of my favorite business stories is when the founder of Intel Israel created an artificial war. He knew that for his semi-conductor factory to stay operational, in a region torn with chaos and doubt, he would have to exponentially outperform his peers and competitor. What did he do? He put up a black pirates flag with the motto “$0.66 or die” meaning that if they did not figure out how to hit a specific $0.66 price point for their semi-conductors, their organization would be out of business. Well, they hit their goals and became one of the highest revenue generators for the early days of Intel. What can you do to get the team fired up and operating like they need to win?
So those are just a few ideas that might be helpful to a growing organization. Perhaps they aren’t the most revolutionary, but sometimes easy tweaks is all that’s needed to make a difference.
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