Six Growth Strategy Tips to Increase Revenue
Highlights
An effective growth strategy begins with addressing the root cause of stagnation.
To find and fix the root cause, start by analyzing the relevant data, addressing the entire problem, delegating tasks thoughtfully, investing in comprehensive education, and considering the long-term aspect of your solutions.
Partner ecosystems are a great way to increase awareness and sales of a product or service. But what happens when your partners aren’t as engaged as you need them to be? Your revenue suffers. That’s why developing a growth strategy should be a top priority — when you have a predictable plan in place, you’re in a better position to take the right steps toward success.
One technology company came to Prime 8 with exactly this problem. Partner amplification had long been an important part of their go-to-market strategy, but when it came to their cloud solutions, it was stagnant, and they weren’t sure why.
The company’s leadership wanted to figure out what was impeding their partner relationships so they could better leverage them to increase the adoption of their solutions and increase revenue.
Prime 8 dug in, leveraging expertise in channel strategy and revenue programs to assess the situation, diagnose the root problems, and define a solution.
On a 12-month timeline, the Prime 8 solution achieved three key goals for the client:
Increased product education to partners so they’d be better prepared to advise end customers in local markets
Moved more partners into the ‘top-tier’ status to provide them with expanded revenue opportunities
Increased through-partner revenue by 60% year over year
Before the year was up, Prime 8 had implemented a training program that increased revenue by 67% year over year — exceeding the goal by 7% — and helped over 400 new partners achieve top-tier status.
So how did we make our client’s growth strategy a reality (and even outstrip their already-ambitious objectives)? The key was discovering and addressing the root cause of the stagnation so that the solutions we put into place wouldn’t be temporary Band-aids, but would instead strengthen partner relationships and improve revenue for the long term.
Here are some of the specific steps we took for this client, which you can adapt to your own organization.
Tips for Creating a Similar Growth Strategy Solution
1. Analyze all of the relevant data.
It was through data analysis, not guesswork, that we were able to devise our solution. We reviewed all relevant data to assess the current landscape of the client’s stagnation and find patterns of roadblocks or successes. From there, we developed key business growth strategies that addressed these roadblocks and built on their successes.
2. Find the root cause of whatever is holding you back from your business growth goals.
We knew from our client that their partner relationships weren’t producing the kind of revenue they expected. But it wasn’t until we did a deep dive into the data that we were able to figure out the cause of the stagnated business growth: a lack of awareness of the available partner education. Partner understanding of the tech company’s solution, relevant offers, and practical guidance was the crucial link between the creation of the service and providing it to customers — and that link was broken.
3. Don’t be afraid to think big.
Fixing one small part of a big problem can mean throwing good resources after bad and missing the intended targets — big problems need big solutions. Bold action is necessary to ensure the problem doesn’t keep popping up. In this case, Prime 8 proposed a large-scale addition of resources dedicated to supporting partners and achieving business growth.
4. Outsource, delegate, and/or hire thoughtfully.
Putting the right people, and the right number of people, in charge of a project is as important as planning the project well — the human element can make or break a large-scale endeavor. Research shows that poor communication, inaccurate requirement gatherings, and inadequate goal setting are three of the primary reasons why projects fail. The new team we sourced for the project assumed responsibility for all of these elements.
5. Invest in comprehensive employee education.
Even the best personnel will fall short of their goals if they’re hamstrung by their organization. If they’re supported, they’ll go further than you or they thought possible. Employees need support in connecting with channel partners as well as resources to provide the channel partners so they can sell more effectively. On average, it takes about two years for a channel partner to be fully productive, which is why good training and resources are so essential for reinforcing your growth strategy.
To this end, Prime 8 built an extensive learning plan for our client to set their new employees up for success. The training included a digital playbook of best practices, educational content, and resources such as email templates, call scripts, and meeting agendas, all of which prepared these new employees to build consistent, powerful relationships with the company’s partners.
6. Take the long view with your growth strategy.
Short-term solutions will likely beget the need for more short-term solutions down the line. But if you can take the long view of the changes you want to see and be patient about implementing them, you’ll set your company up to increase revenue year over year.
For our client, we didn’t stop at training the new employees to provide product education to their partners; we also developed a timeline for encouraging partners to work toward top-tier status, which will continue to boost revenue for years to come.
In addition, we produced an add-on playbook to help partners expand into other geographies, which we identified as a key step on the growth roadmap.
Creating Your Own Growth Opportunities
A 67% increase in revenue may seem like an unattainable goal, but it might be closer than you think. For our client, the key to creating growth opportunities was hiring expert consultants (Prime 8) with the experience to identify the weak points in their current process and design a more effective business strategy.
Follow our blog to learn more about our business growth strategies, and when you’re ready to optimize your business strategy to achieve a higher revenue goal, reach out. We’re happy to help.
