{"id":6838,"date":"2022-01-18T22:04:57","date_gmt":"2022-01-18T14:04:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/slash.bravefactor.com\/?post_type=resources&#038;p=6838"},"modified":"2024-01-30T18:55:42","modified_gmt":"2024-01-30T10:55:42","slug":"how-to-build-a-growth-strategy-for-a-100m-business","status":"publish","type":"resources","link":"https:\/\/slash.co\/articles\/how-to-build-a-growth-strategy-for-a-100m-business\/","title":{"rendered":"How to build a growth strategy for a $100m business?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Life is too short to Build Something Nobody Wants. \u2013 It\u2019s time to build a sales strategy that works.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Wish to grow a 100 Million Dollar Business? That seems like a very daunting task. But, with the right product, the right strategy and financial backing, it may be doable.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Today, we are going to break this goal into actionable steps that are easy to understand and implement. The animal framework is based on the brilliant <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/christophjanz.blogspot.com\/2014\/10\/five-ways-to-build-100-million-business.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">2014 article from Christophe Janz on 5 ways to build a 100m business<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. We added commentary and thoughts based on our experience at Slash.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The article below is based on the talks that Andries De Vos, the CEO of Slash, has delivered to several <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">organizations<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and audiences including <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.r3.com\/corda-platform\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">R3 Corda<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Series-A Startups and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/bwork.id\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">B Work<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Bali. For the original slides, see <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/slash_co\/slash-how-to-build-a-b2-b-sales-machinecompressed\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Slash Slideshare<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Steps to grow a $100 million business<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is important to understand the fundamental building blocks of making a product driven business.\u00a0 If you are planning to build a big business, you need to get two things right;<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Build a solution users want \u2013 this one seems quite obvious, yet most people choose to dive into other aspects rather than starting out with the key.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Get as many users as you want \u2013 Once you have a plan in place, the next step is to acquire customers to help you reach a specific goal.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Two key assumptions<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We\u2019ll start by taking two key assumptions, based on the Lean Startup methodology:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Value Hypotheses \u2013 Value Hypotheses tests whether a product\/service delivers value to customers or not.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Growth Hypotheses \u2013 Growth Hypotheses tests how new customers will reach your product\/service.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What is growth?<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The first thing you need to understand is; \u2018growth isn\u2019t a strategy, it is the outcome\u2019. Next, you need to determine whether you are in a <\/span><b>\u2018product\u2019 <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">business or a <\/span><b>\u2018service\u2019 <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">business.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you are in a service business, you are essentially selling time to solve a job.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you are in a product business, you are selling a thing that solves the job.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Animal framework and Slash<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are different ways you can build a<\/span><b> USD 100 Million Business<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. You need to be sure of two things; \u201cWhat is the average contract size per customer? and \u201cHow many customers will you need?\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt all comes down to what you are hunting; <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">flies, mice, whales, rabbits, microbes, dears <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">etc. For instance, at Slash, we are hunting elephants that essentially translates to customers who offer $100,000 and above\u201d, notes Slash CEO Andries De Vos, stating that this will become the driving framework of your marketing and strategy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-5982 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/slash.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Capture.png\" alt=\"Capture\" width=\"751\" height=\"386\" title=\"\"><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example, there could be 1 million customers giving 100 dollars. Or 100 customers giving you a million dollars. As per the image listed; if you are hunting whales, you need 10 whales, if you are hunting dinosaurs, you\u2019ll need 100 dinosaurs, if you are hunting elephants, you\u2019ll need 1000 elephants, and so forth.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Anatomy of growth<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Before we proceed further, let\u2019s look at the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">anatomy of growth.<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Essentially products plus users translate to growth. There are three different types of growth engines. Before looking at them let\u2019s explore a few key metrics:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The first one is <\/span><b>CAC <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2013 Customer Acquisition Cost measured over X months.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The second one is <\/span><b>LTV <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2013 Lifetime Value of the Customer which is the revenue measured over X months.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You need to compare these two values and ensure your LTV is at least three times higher than the CAC. It gives you the ability to get the payback of the customer in less than a year.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How to get your first 100 customers through market and sales?<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To achieve this goal, you can follow three fundamental strategies;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong> Paid strategy<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You buy users for less money than they earn you. This strategy is proven but requires a lot of money to be spent on salespeople, physical stores, search, advertisements, Press, SEO, content marketing etc.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><\/b><b> <\/b> <strong>Viral<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Your acquired users will bring you more users. Viral growth is essentially a product or a brand strategy. It is slow but potentially huge.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To implement this strategy; you need to have a design and tech team. Alongside that, you need to prioritize growth over everything else. Make sure that virality is the core of your product.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><\/b><b> <\/b> <strong>Sticky<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The sticky strategy essentially means that once a user shows up, they never leave. You need to ensure that your customer stays for as long as possible. This is primarily a product and channel-centric strategy and is a suitable option for nearly 90% of companies.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here are a few things to keep in mind: Customer retention is everything, your old customers are more important than acquiring new customers, you need to over-deliver and convert subscribers into paying clients. The idea is to retain, upsell and get referrals.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Hunting strategy<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Based on the three growth strategies, you need to get down to the hunting.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Hunting microbes and flies<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To hunt microbes and flies, you need 10 million active users and 100 million people who download your app\/use your website. This is an oversimplification and the exact number is based on multiple factors such as conversion rate, user activity etc. There are two ways to achieve this goal; with the help of SEO traffic and virality. Some great examples are Yelp and Brainly.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Hunting deers and elephants<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To hunt deers, you need about 10k customers with 100k business leads. It is quite similar to hunting rabbits. Adding an inside sales force supports the growth.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Think of Elephants as large enterprise clients which need 1000 customers who spend $100k. Elephant hunting requires an entirely different approach than rabbit and deer hunting. Essentially, you will require two things; a lot of money for product-market fit and an enterprise field sales team.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Hunting brontosaurus and whales<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To hunt Brontosaurus, you essentially need 100 customers of $1M ARPA. You need to have a solid background, at least 20+ years of experience, and a strong network in the target industry. Veeva and Workday are great examples.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Consider whales as very large enterprises and government clients. Essentially, you will need 10 clients, a unique solution, and a sales reputation. A great example would be PALANTIR.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Hunting strategies for first time founders<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The best strategy for first-time founders would be B2C for flies and mice, B2B for rabbits and deers, and enterprise-ready solutions for elephants and brontosaurus.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Essentially, it comes down to finding a solution that your users want and getting as many users as possible!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Animal Framework is a practical approach to guiding your growth strategy. If you understand who you are chasing, you\u2019ll be able to formulate the right strategy and playbooks. We sincerely hope you found this article helpful! If you have any more questions, feel free to<\/span><\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/slash.co\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> reach out<\/span><\/i><\/a><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to the Slash team.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":11644,"parent":0,"template":"","resource-topic":[],"resource-type":[43],"class_list":["post-6838","resources","type-resources","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","resource-type-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slash.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resources\/6838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/slash.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resources"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/slash.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/resources"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slash.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slash.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"resource-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slash.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource-topic?post=6838"},{"taxonomy":"resource-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slash.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource-type?post=6838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}