How To Accelerate Your Growth Agenda

Growth is the essence of business success and whether that is for personal advancement or for the cause of your business there are ten essential ingredients you will need.

Firstly the right mindset - Without the right mindset you are firmly stuck at base one. All business leaders and successful entrepreneurs have an approach to life that is epitomised by their positive attitude, open to opportunity and unperturbed by the negative.

Secondly, the will and the action to be first. Those with first mover advantage invariably win the lions share and take the dominant market position.

Thirdly, look for trends. Pick them out - sniff them out and position yourself at the right end of the innovation curve.

Fourth, understand the difference between your own customer and the consumer. Consumers are forever advancing, wanting more, looking for something new. Your customers are those that happen once chose to transact with you and a likely the result of your past offering, your previous routes to market and your brand footprint. You will have a reach, a certain following that does not represent the whole market. Look out for the changing consumer and prepare to buy into you future by getting close and understanding their evolving needs. Your future and potential big leaps in your market share and growth lie with the consumer.

Fifth - Take the position of leader - market leader that is. Create the perception of leader in everything that you do. Try not to follow but create your own spin even when you do have to follow someone else. To create the perception of leader, you must not only lead by example but with ideas that show value to your target audience and that are memorable.

Sixthly, be creative and innovative. For growth you will need both creativity and innovation. Dreams and action the two mothers of inspiration and business success. Creativity is the process of idea generation and innovation is making it happen in a new and valuable way.

Seventh - The seventh ingredient are Champions Of Growth. You need champions to drive you growth agenda - people provide energy and a focal point for teams of passion to be created. Whether you play that role or get someone else to provide that drive and energy it is an essential ingredient.

Eight, treat change as a constant. Change is not something you do every now and then when you have hit an iceberg and you need a change in fortune for your business. Change is a constant and those organisations that are better at change, that are more flexible and agile are better positioned for long term growth.

Nine - Get organized! Be creative and flexible yes but you must also be methodical and have a plan - even as basic as create and launch three new offerings per year! Fail to plan will mean that you will plan to fail to grow. Things do not always happen by chance - you have to focus yourself and your teams on growth and having a clear structured plan will help that focus. It will provide the direction and the momentum to drive your growth agenda.

And finally the tenth and most crucial and action led ingredient - create and manage your growth agenda by a few key priorities.

I call these the PILLARS OF GROWTH.

Once you have kicked off and built momentum, How do you keep it going? How do you remind yourself and your business of the right things to be doing day in and day out? And most importantly if things are going wrong, meandering too much or stuttering through a sticky patch - how do you focus on the right things and not get distracted, how do you keep your focus and persistence at the levels required to get the job done?

The key is to distil your Growth Plan into a few key themes that will keep you rock solid and totally committed to the end objective. These Pillars are the essentials for the growth plan to succeed, they are the non negotiables for your leadership team and the people in your business. You should not have too many of these but the larger the organisation the more you may find needs fixing! I would say a maximum of seven themes and a minimum of three.

If you can put all ten of these PRINCIPLES OF GROWTH together then you will have an unstoppable growth agenda that will reap huge rewards and guarantee your personal and business success.

if you would like to discover more about developing your own growth agenda why not check out the Growth Master's free mini-course The Ten Growth Strategy Lessons by going to http://www.etonmarketing.com/10-free-growth-lessons

Till the next time - Passionate about your Growth!

Steve L Jones

Growth Master

CEO Eton Marketing