As a business owner, you want long-term success.
And that means growth – whether that’s revenue, profit, or just more time for yourself.
When you say that word – growth – it sounds simple. But many of the companies we talk to have stalled. Why?
And more importantly, how do you fix it?
We’ll discuss how to start growing again in a minute.
It’s not how you might think.
But first, why does growth stall?
The last year was hard for a lot of industries. That’s for sure. But what I’ve found is, in a lot of cases, it just made an already-existing problem worse.
What problem is that? Employees who are not fully engaged in their work. Look, it’s hard enough to grow a business even with a fully engaged team.
With disengaged employees it can feel like you’re pushing a rope uphill.
If that sounds like you, don’t worry, you’re not weird.
The Gallup Organization estimates that only one-third of the employees in American businesses are fully engaged in their work. That means we’re not getting the best work from two out of every three employees!
How does that happen? Well, growth changes more than just your size. It changes the entire dynamic. And what got you here won’t help you take the next step.
It used to be that you were a tight-knit team. You didn’t need to tell people how to take care of the customer because everyone saw you do it.
But now, employees are less connected to the center.
And that means that it’s getting harder and harder to keep every everyone fully engaged. Maybe it feels like some of your employees don’t even care if you’re successful or not.
Gallup showed that those disengaged employees cost your business 34 percent of their annual salary in increased absenteeism and lower productivity.
But the biggest problem is that disengaged employees always lead to disgruntled customers.
This is what pains most of the owner-operators of businesses that I talk to. They grew precisely because their customers loved them so much.
Now they’re dealing with more complaints. They’re even starting to lose customers.
As promised, we’ve come to the reason why growth has stalled.
It used to be that you were adding new customers and not skipping a beat. Now, you’re adding them just to replace the ones you’re losing.
As a business owner, you know that it’s more profitable to keep the customers you have. In fact, it costs 5 to 6 times as much to bring in a new customer.
So, how do get the growth you want? The only way to grow – at this stage of business – is from the inside out.
That’s why we created the 4D Transformation Method. Through this process, we help companies grow from the inside out.
Here’s how we do it.
We start with the first D by Defining the company culture. Remember the early days when it seemed like everyone got to work early and stayed late? And all day long they were just looking for walls to bust through?
We want to bring that focus and purpose back to the work of your front-line employees. We refine systems and procedures, creating clear lines of accountability.
In short, we’ll create the alignment and clarity you need to develop a fully engaged team.
Next, you’ll Design the Experience you want for your customers. We’re in an experience economy. The businesses with the best customer experience are those that will win in the marketplace.
The third step is to develop the team. You can’t have a fully engaged team without a focus on their development. We work with you to create a custom learning and development plan for every position in the business.
After those three steps, you’re ready for what you wanted in the first place: Drive Results by growing from the inside out. We’ll help you identify the best opportunities for growth and design the process to get you there.
That’s a short summary of our 4D Transformation Method. As the owner-operator of a successful business, I have no doubt that – given enough time and money – you could figure out how to do all of this.
But wouldn’t you rather spend that time growing your business? Isn’t that why you’ve read this far?
Let me see if I can help you get back to the growth you want. Just take 10-15 minutes to complete our Customer Experience Assessment. The assessment is followed by a free strategy session with me.
It will at least help you think about your business in a new way. But it could turn out to be the best hour you’ve ever spent.
Just get started and see if I can help you grow from the inside out.