Over the past 6 years, we’ve been lucky enough to work with CEOs and business leaders across the B2B tech industry – our specific area of expertise is working with the challengers who know that their businesses need to catch up with their vision.
Answering that challenge isn’t a one-blog project or dealt with in a Whitepaper, but we’ve boiled down some of the recurring points we’ve seen and then put into practice when helping our clients to talk about their businesses in a different way that unlocks greater growth.
Why is this so important for CEOs, 2 reasons:
- It helps them drive deeper understanding for analysts, investors and shareholders valuing the business potential and worth
- It enables them to better equip their teams to generate higher revenue and growth
But what’s really going on, why can’t CEOs just get the business aligned and talking as they see it to be – here’s some commons reasons, the business:
- Is finding it increasingly hard to articulate it’s evolving capabilities and why it’s relevant to the market in a way above its existing way of doing it which means it’s not sounding unique above the competitors
- as moved up the value chain in terms of how critical it is and what it can enable it’s customers to achieve and if it can package this to the market better this will support and enable exponential growth is a true goal
Some must think, just how hard can it be to articulate what the business is and what it does in a way that resonates with the current market and future – but there lies the central issue because both the business and the market are changing differently at the same time!
Often we’re in a great position to look under the hood of a business to see it evolving quickly and possibly by acquisition to a point senior leaders can’t explain what the business capabilities are and what the portfolio is in a way that’s clear and relevant. This is frequently complicated by the business operating in silos as it takes its internal structure as the go-to-market offering and the portfolio is a mix of legacy and new innovative capabilities that are hard to explain in a logical way – and in a way customers can understand and buy simply!
Here are 5 things leaders can work on to help define their business:
- Work on an evidence-based approach to define the market competitive space leaders want the business to focus on going forwards in order to secure growth. Which audience, which part of the competitive market place and to which type of audience? Creating a relentless and granular focus on this as a single project removes all the noise and forces absolute focus.
- Drive to pinpoint where the business wants to be in the future in terms of defining the business, its offer, what that offer enables (or what problem it solves) and why this is different from competitive offerings. Do this without compromise
- Create a group of business, sales and marketing leaders who understand both the business and customers to add increased focus to this work. Keeping the group small (5-6 people) is imperative for clear decision making, maintenance of focus, and to reduce drain on resources
- Realize that perfection in such work is a myth. There are no single USPs, but being 90%+ right will be workable and get you to market in half the time with great reward
- Keep people focused by remembering that, ultimately, this is 60% about what the business will realistically become in the next 2-3 years, and not just what it is now
For the CEOs who do figure this balance out the results will be radical, from enabling their business to engage with the next tier of customers, enter new markets, expand into new verticals or grow and protect their competitive advantage.
What we see, as a theme, is if the CEO and business leaders can realise how to precisely construct a new value-led proposition to engage customers, investors and talent – it gives them a compelling rallying cry to call their business around and enable their vision to be taken to market by the many. And by doing that they then stand a greater chance of increasing share value, getting to market faster and shortening the sales process.
If you want to digest a little more, like what other challenges we frequently see from CEOs, what the rewards are of tackling them and what can be done about answering them – take a brief look at our report and keep up with our other blogs!