Business marketing, product, and sales leaders have faced a lot of tough challenges over the past several years. I’m inspired by the leaders at our clients’ companies and at Forrester who have helped their organizations navigate through a global pandemic, radically shifting buyer behaviors, economic turmoil, supply chain disruption, and fierce competition. Growing revenue predictably is harder than ever. Winning the competition for growth year after year will be even harder. Now is the time for leaders to up their game and find the most durable growth model possible.
Focus On What Leaders Can Control And The Fundamentals Of Growth
It may seem like there’s no formula for competitive growth when there are so many things outside your control. But there is. In our experience with clients and at Forrester, in good times and bad, two things are very clear. First, when external threats are mounting, or when external threats are minimal and things are going exceptionally well, B2B companies tend to lose focus on the fundamentals that power their growth engines. Second, marketing, sales, and product leaders tend to overrotate on short-term strategies that aim to extract value from customers instead of prioritizing customer value creation. That’s when growth engines start to sputter.
The Best Growth Engines Are Simple, Powerful, Challenging, And Achievable
To deliver value better than the competition in good times and in bad, B2B companies need to abandon short-term strategies bent on extracting value from buyers and instead build, or rebuild, a winning growth engine. Don’t overengineer a growth engine strategy. The best growth engines are simple, powerful, challenging, and achievable. Forrester has determined that winning B2B growth engines will be based on creating value with the three most important fundamentals that leaders can control. These fundamentals are key components in Forrester’s B2B customer-obsessed growth engine:
- Obsession over business buyers and the value that they need
- Aligning marketing, product, and sales around buyer value
- Leveraging technology and technology-led innovation to maximize buyer value
Attend Forrester’s B2B Summit APAC To Learn More And Maximize Your Growth Engine
Business is a competition. It’s a competition for buyers, a competition for value, and a competition for growth. At this year’s B2B Summit APAC, I’ll be keynoting a session that walks through the forces shaping the competition for growth in B2B markets and Forrester’s B2B customer-obsessed growth engine model. It’s a perpetual business motion designed to grow revenue, profit, and retention efficiently and consistently. Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you there.
