Why is growth maturity so important?
As my children grow into adulthood, raising their families and building their lives, I can’t help but reflect on the transformations that have happened in each of them. My youngest son, in particular, was ultra-curious, often putting himself into fascinating predicaments. For example, when he was just under two years old, I found him on top of the refrigerator, eating a chocolate bar and leaving no visible clue about how he got there.
We were no different from our children. As youngsters, thought processes and decision-making skills often need more wisdom and consideration to deliver the right outcome. Young minds lack critical context from years of experience and like situations to inform their decisions. Parents do their best to model and teach, but it takes time to understand concepts that lead to success in life.
Nice story, but how does this relate to business?
As it turns out, Growth Maturity is also essential in business. A great example is, putting advanced responsibilities on an underprepared individual will result in frustration and underperformance. Likewise, utilizing poor prospect data to drive engagement will certainly miss conversion targets.
Given the complexity of business operations, it’s paramount to understand the critical success elements that make sustainable growth possible and how they all work together. Remember, growth is only as strong as the weakest success element.
Growth’s Six Success Elements
Represent Your Value
Positioning, Messaging, and Content
Engage with Relevance
Buyer / Customer / Partner Engagement
Deliver Seamlessly
Sales and Marketing Processes
Automate+ Personalize
Digital Systems and Data Integration
Optimize Delivery
Customer Data Driving Business Insights
Align Strategically
KPIs and Performance Management
Digital Exhaust’s Growth Maturity Index™
Within the Growth Maturity Index (GMI), there are five levels of maturity. Each represents the degree to which you perform across the six success elements. For example, an organization may demonstrate strong performance in its ability to articulate its value but may need to improve its ability to automate and personalize the buying experience.
In every client engagement I’ve facilitated for over 30 years, I have not witnessed a client successfully advancing all six success elements. There are always areas for improvement to unleash a business’s growth potential. The key is identifying areas of low maturity that impede growth and then developing strategies to remove those impediments. This chart oversimplifies but summarizes what to look for across the six success elements.
Full Customer Lifecycle
Within the Growth Maturity Index (GMI), there are five levels of maturity. Each represents the degree to which you perform across the six success elements. For example, an organization may demonstrate strong performance in its ability to articulate its value but may need to improve its ability to automate and personalize the buying experience.
Lowering attrition is only part of the objective. Giving customers more value leads to upsell and cross-sell opportunities, which is also a priority. Incrementally adding measurable value, even through proper outreach, enhances satisfaction and lowers attrition while creating new business opportunities with them. Harnessing insights from massive volumes of customer information lets you hyper-personalize engagement, driving product/solution activation and increased satisfaction and customer lifetime value (CLV).
Decades of B2B marketing experience have given me valuable context for how to approach building a growth engine. There are no shortcuts, no silver bullets, no dark art. Instead, it’s a process of continual improvement that, with diligence, will remove business friction and enable sustained growth.
At Digital Exhaust, we leverage our decades of experience and GMI to help you define the right plan to help you attain short and long-term revenue and growth outcomes.
