3 Under-the-Radar Strategies for Growth in 2017

Guest blog post by Sertifi

The basics of growing a business are no secret – build a great product, invest in talented people, and find the sales strategy that works for you (easy, right?). If you are reading this blog post, you are probably already hitting the right marks for steady, incremental growth, but may be looking for key areas to focus on for the year ahead. Here, we’re sharing three under-the-radar strategies for gaining competitive advantage and expediting growth in an increasingly customer-focused landscape.

Security and Compliance

Security and compliance goes way beyond heavily regulated industries like healthcare and banking, and should be top of mind for any company asking their customers for access to sensitive information. Now more than ever, it is critical to have robust systems in place to protect this data.

Customers are willing to hand over information as part of the cost of doing business, but in turn, they expect it to be treated with kid gloves. A security breach can incur significant financial costs, damage your reputation, and send customers running in the opposite direction – and all it takes is a minor detail like unmasked credit card information. Less a growth strategy than a cautionary tale, nothing undoes hard-won growth more quickly than an expensive, detrimental security failure.

Keep it Simple for Customers

Consider for a moment the amount of research you put into purchasing something as simple as a pair of jeans. Accenture calls today’s consumer the “non-stop customer”. They require a significant amount of information before making a purchasing decision, and expect answers to their questions easily available on demand. That mindset doesn’t change once they become a customer – they expect instant, easy service and support. According to Forrester, 77% of adults say that the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good online customer service is value their time.

Any interruptions in this flow of information becomes a sticking point in the customer journey, and an opportunity for your customers and prospects to leave and choose a competitor. For some fast-growing companies, their service delivery metrics are even more valuable than their sales numbers – because they recognize that growth is meaningless without the ability to provide support and retain those customers.

Technology for Digital Business

Security and a seamless customer experience don’t exist in a vacuum. Underpinning these core growth strategies is the robust, secure technology supporting your business processes. CIO magazine reports that by 2020, 67 percent of enterprise IT infrastructure and software spending will be on cloud-based technologies. Identifying and implementing the right technology fit can offer key competitive advantages like increased productivity, reduced administrative work, and more time for revenue-generating activities. In other words, if leveraged correctly, technology offers growth opportunities within the existing sales and operations structure of your company.

To learn more about one company’s success story in tapping into these under-the-radar growth strategies, join us on Wednesday, January 25 for a webinar featuring Millennium S.I. Vice President of Operations, Matthew Scudder. If you can’t make it, register anyway and we will share the recording with you after the event.

Millennium S.I provides business management software and growth strategies to the beauty and wellness industries. Since implementing Zuora, Salesforce, Drawloop, and Sertifi, they have reported record-breaking profits, grown by more than 60%, and eliminated onboarding delays. To find out how they did it, register here.

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