Hi Everyone, my name is Francis Hooke and I’m the director of We Grow Businesses, based here in Stevenage in Hertfordshire. In this video we will give you an Introduction to the Fundamentals of Business Growth. I’d like to share with you a model that we use with our clients, that helps us to break down the complicated problem of how to grow a business into three more manageable chunks. Those chunks are: winning more work; delivering more work; and banking more money. So let’s drill into those in a bit more detail.
In terms of winning more work, this is all about marketing, generating people who are interested in our products and services. Sales, turning people who are interested into paying customers. Levels of repeat business, getting people back buying again. And pricing, charging them the right amount of money.
If we get all of that right then we’re going to have some customers. Then we need to deliver products and services for those customers. And the key thing that we’re interested in here is delivering things on time, on budget and to specification.
Assuming we get all of that right then we’re going to be paid some money, and there are two things I’m interested in here. One is cash – making sure people are paying us on time, and that we’re putting money aside to pay VAT and Corporation Tax if applicable. The second thing that I’m interested in is margins – so making sure that we’re making a good profit on the things that we’re doing.
Now, if we get all of that right then we should have a nice, sustainable business. If we want to grow our business, then I’d argue that we need to get incrementally better at winning more work, delivering more work and banking more money. As you might imagine, that’s where we set plans and goals and targets and measure progress to make sure our clients are all moving in the right direction. And that’s basically how we do it. I hope this Introduction to the Fundamentals of Business Growth is useful, and catch you again next time!
