Welcome to the first edition of the Competitive Edge!

We're building a community of business owners, product managers, and strategists passionate about helping each other grow revenue in a way competitors can't match.

I've been advising Fortune 500s on their growth strategy for 6 years and am excited to share those simple, actionable tips with you.

In the meantime, if you're having problems growing your business, DM me on Twitter and I'm happy to help.

Let's dive in:

In today’s issue:

I’ll show you how to brainstorm ideas to hit your growth goals and decide which ones to go after.

If you learn this technique, you'll:

• Brainstorm a wide range of new opportunities to grow your revenue

• Prioritize which ideas to go after first (and which to kill)

• Test which ones are most likely to help you meet your goals

• Choose which to work on

Let's dive in:

Revenue ideas to hit your growth goals

First, create clear growth goals

Defining your goal sounds simple, which makes it the most overlooked part of the process.

Bigger goal? You'll likely need to take on more risk.

Want less risk? You'll need to trim back your goal.

Goal template:

• Success metric: Revenue? Profit? Customers acquired?

• Quantified: How much?

• Timeline: By when?

Tweak these 3 levers to get the risk / reward profile you're looking for.

Examples:

• I want to grow my revenue by $700k in the next 2 years

• I want to acquire 300 more customers in the northeast US region by the end of the year

Be specific.

Come up with solutions

Now that you know your goal, come up with a range of ideas to solve your problem.

A few tips for brainstorming:

Diverse backgrounds: Creativity = taking an idea from one context and using it in another. Having people with different perspectives increases the chances you'll find the best solution.

Other industries: Look to see how other industries resolved a similar problem. Use their ideas for inspiration.

All ideas accepted: Now is not the time for skeptics. Ideas that are typically shut down can be inspiration for solutions or be molded into great options. More on how/when to be skeptical later.

Boundaries: It's easier to come up with ideas when you're focused on an area. "What's your favorite pasta dish?" is an easier question to answer than "what's your favorite food?"

Example boundaries for growth ideas for:

• One product

• One industry

• One customer segment

Be clear on where you're not coming up with solutions. If you're running the exercise for multiple business lines, run different workshops for each.

Come up with reasons your solutions won't work

Now is the time to be skeptical. But rather than focusing on why it can't work, ask:

"What would have to be true for this idea to hit the growth goals?"

E.g.,

• How much would we need to invest to make it happen?

• Which customers would need to want it? How many?

• What does the competitor's reaction need to be?

• What industry would we need to focus on?

The biggest reasons stopping your idea from hitting growth goals are your blockers. Choose the biggest blockers and test them to see how likely they are to stop your solution from reaching its growth goal.

Test blockers

Here we're testing how likely blockers are to occur (and if so, how much of an impact they have).

Tests tend to have an inverse relationship between effort (time/cost) and accuracy.

Don't have a lot of time or low budget? Choose a lower fidelity test.

High dollar growth goals with a lot of investment at risk? Choose a higher fidelity.

Example to understand customer desires:

• Quick, low accuracy: Read online research reports

• Longer, mid-accuracy: Customer interviews

• Longest, highest accuracy: MVPs

Kill solutions that fail testing.

Decide on a solution

Now its time to choose.

Each solution will have varying degrees of impact and effort (time/cost) needed.

Rank each solution based on

• Impact (how close it gets you to your goal)

• Effort (investment needed to make it happen)

Prioritize solutions and choose the ones with the highest impact, lowest effort.

And that’s a wrap!

Summary:

• Define your problem

• Come up with solutions

• Come up with reasons your solutions won't work

• Test concerns to see how likely they are to happen

• Decide on a solution

Community Questions:

I'm excited to see the community so active and motivated to create sustainable growth, I’d like to answer some questions I received from the community this week:

Being skeptical is okay! (if done in the right way).

Instead of saying "this can't work" ask, "what would have to be true to get this to work?"

This invites conversation to morph the original idea into a great solution.

The question for that business is "what do they want to look like in 3 - 5 years."

(Time depends on industry maturity and business size)

To get there you need:

• Growth goals

• Org / op model goals

If client can't keep their head above water, start by with org / op model.

If anyone has questions about problems you’re facing with your business strategies feel free to DM me on Twitter @BrianFOConnor

I’ll answer your questions in the next issue.

Talk soon!