Business Growth Coaching & Strategy

“Leadership is all about integrity, honesty and accountability. All components of trust.” – Simon Sinek

We frequently help business leaders and owners to set their business growth strategy, through 1:1 coaching, team coaching and workshops.

What do you need help with?

I need some 1:1 coaching and advice on how to grow my business, and/or coaching for my leadership team and/or sales leadership team to help them build internal trust with each other, and external trust with clients, to improve their profile in the market.

I need help developing and implementing my business growth strategy.

1:1 Executive & Leadership Team Coaching

We understand how hard it can be for business leaders to keep their head above water. It’s hard to keep focus on vision and strategy when faced with sceptics, cynics and saboteurs, especially when trying to implement change.

We also understand that a team is only as strong as it’s weakest link. In order to succeed, everyone in a leadership team must continuously focus on its improvement in order to strengthen its value and impact. This is particularly true when change is afoot.

We provide 1:1 executive and leadership team coaching to business leaders to help challenge their thinking about how their business will grow, to keep them motivated to keep going, and provide coaching on how to manoeuvre their way through the many obstacles of business. Where appropriate we will make connections to other executives in similar positions where we believe there is mutual benefit. More specifically, we help leaders develop long term client, growth and business plans that align with the business vision.

Case study:

VideoPro have traditionally been seen as an organisation who sell communications equipment to businesses and individuals. Recognising the future issues with that model, Keith worked 1:1 with the Executive Manager and then with the leadership team initially over a period of about 12 months to determine how to shift the business to a consulting model, determining how the appropriate skills for that model would be developed, and assitance in recruiting a new sales manager to drive the change forward.

Here is a quote from Cameron Douglas, Executive Director, VideoPro, about the coaching undertaken with Keith.

Growth Strategy Development

We work with leadership teams who want to develop a new business growth strategy or have a renewed focus on an existing strategy that has not been as effective as desired. This is often a four-stage process:

  1. We usually start working with the group as a whole, often commencing with a workshop to help them open up about the business strategy, and focusing in on the business growth element of that strategy by using the four levels of thinking. This helps build a common understanding of the strategy and the critical steps to achieve it. It also serves to build better trust between the leadership group as they open up about any concerns or reservations they have and also any areas where they will each need support from others.
  2. This is then followed by a session to link the business growth strategy with the key client program. At that point there may be resistance as realisation kicks in that they will need to overcome some difficult obstacles along the way, such as winning new clients, moving on old clients, and developing new skills.
  3. Often this will be followed by a version of the ENGAGE sales training program to establish baseline skills and develop a common lexicon.
  4. We then work with individuals within the team on:
    • their division/sector growth and client plans.
    • their own BD/client relationships skills.
    • How to build trust within their own teams to help facilitate team effectiveness and cross-selling within the business.
Four levels of thinking:

In this video Keith gives an overview of how the four levels of thinking can be used to help develop strategy.

Connecting your business strategy to your key client strategy:

In this video Keith discusses the steps that need to be taken to connect your business strategy to your client strategy.

Case study:

A leadership team were wrestling with how to turn the ship around. The leader had a vision of where the business had to go and also had an idea of how to get there, but many in the leadership team were struggling with what this looked like, both at a team and an individual level.

Keith first ran a one-day workshop to get them to agree on one sentence that truly captured the essence of the vision and strategy of the business, using a four-levels of thinking strategic process. This gave everyone clarity on the vision and also on any concerns and where support would be needed and where significant hurdles needed to be overcome.  One of the main outcomes was an agreed list of strategic priorities, which were allocated to different leaders.  One of these strategies was the growth strategy.

Following that, we helped the team identify a number of clients and prospects where significant growth seemed possible. By looking at a three-year horizon, we managed to avoid all the ‘buts’ and the team realised that the potential for growth far exceeded the firm’s actual growth target.  This inspired the team about the significant growth potential – and that it was in their hands.

Following that the team developed growth strategies for each of the growth clients/prospects including target revenue and market share and individual strategies for developing relationships with senior executives in each of the clients/prospects. This was then communicated to the wider firm and each client team was brought together to kick start the new activities.

Would you like to discuss ideas for how to accelerate your business growth strategy?