In our last article on Revenue Growth Management (Link), we discussed the importance of focusing on implementation and the four internal critical success factors for delivering real revenue growth:

1. Frontline focus

2. Empowering change

3. Agile and integrated planning

4. Clarity of decisions

In this article we layout three steps to revenue growth as part of your recovery.

The current Covid-19 induced crisis will require a combination of actions to implement revenue growth initiatives. What those are will depend on a company’s unique situation, but underlying each will be the need to move with a sense of real urgency. Speed to market will be a crucial deciding factor between those companies that win and those that lose:

Very quickly you need to get a fix on those elements of the business that are going to hinder you from rebounding or kicking on as part of a recovery process. It’s no use spending many weeks and months analysing data and reviewing operations. Businesses need a quick and reliable read on the situation and the ability to take action to address immediate issues.

Early in our existence, during the financial crisis of 2008, we recognised the gap in the consulting world for a speedy business health check. Through our Commercial Diagnostic (Link) each area of commercial concern is assessed against a set of Capability Triggers for Change, to gauge the severity of the issue. These are indicators of poor performance, and important to address if a business is driving for better results. The output is a set of prioritised actions to address as part of a recovery plan.

It is a tried and tested tool, having been used over 50 times in 12 years. It takes 1 – 2 weeks to complete. Moreover, in the world of social distancing it can also be completed remotely.

Crisis or no crisis, a well-functioning approach to planning involving a number of dependent elements, is crucial to organising the businesses activities. Covid-19 is forcing businesses to adjust the timing horizon, and creating a different set of decisions upon which plans should be built. Agility will be a crucial attribute to delivering with speed. To be quick and responsive to unfamiliar and short-term change, organisations need to :

EXAMPLE

“Leaders at all levels” was a program created to mobilise the organisation to embrace a new way of working, and accelerate its implementation in half the time of a similar previous exercise . 17 senior managers from different functions were handpick to own and deliver a cultural change program. Their task was to run a series of workshops to cascade the initiative to the next level down, and then assign a set of next level leaders who they would work with to cascade it further in the organisation.

EXAMPLE

A set of Ground-rules were established for how managers were to behave in the monthly activity planning meetings. Before each meeting each ground-rule was assigned to one individual, whose responsibility it was to report back to the group at the end of the meeting on the groups behaviour with a rating out of 10. The resulting scorecard and improvement actions were documented and used as a basis to improve the next meeting.

EXAMPLE

‘Zero Admin’ project was set up with the specific objective of driving increased selling and customer engagement time by eliminating, where possible, administrative and reporting duties for sales reps. This has now been extended into a quarterly review to ensure any new working practice lives by the ‘Zero Admin’ doctrine.

The result during the first six months was a 52% improvement in time spent by sales reps engaging and selling to customers.

EXAMPLE

Two audits were carried out for our client in support of the monthly operational planning processes: one on the specific decisions being made, and the second on the information being used to support it. A set of decision and insight matrices were then developed for each planning meeting to ensure absolute clarity of ‘who-does-what-when’ to avoid duplication, and eliminate unnecessary data:

• Decision makers were classified into three levels

  • People who decide – final approver and accountable for delivery

  • People who recommend – they have the idea, are the architect, and prepare the recommendation & outline the benefits

  • People who input – they need to be consulted as part of the process, otherwise the decision cannot be made properly

• What would NOT get done from the existing work schedule was also documented, to ensure no legacy decisions would ‘pollute’ the new way of working

• Information was classified as must have’ or  ‘nice to have’, with all of the latter eliminated

Number of decisions required to be made were reduced by 65%, investment in unwanted information reduced by over €750,000 annually, and time spent in planning meetings cut from an average of  30 hours per week to 7.5 hours.

EXAMPLE

All projects that we run are built on a similar model, that aim to ensure strong buy-in from across the organisation, and a lasting impact in how the solutions are built and implemented. Whether employing PACH Solutions or going it alone the following approach we take provides a proven set of rules to work by :

Rule #1: We encourage employees to help search out and diagnose the key issues holding the company back, and communicate this back to executive management. We do it with our Commercial Diagnostic (see above), but the same applies when analysing your own business

Rule #2: Delivery through collaboration, making it happen with the teams: If people are engaged and motivated the result will be long lasting, so we believe in working alongside our clients people in teams, to build and deliver workable solutions. We bring the external know-how and science, we combine it with what’s best internally as shared by the teams, together we engineer the best solution, and help it on its way to implementation

Rule #3: Stakeholder Management: bringing the whole organisation along for the ride: We aim to deliver an energised and enthusiastic project team that delivers, and manage expectations of senior executives so that they trust and believe they will.

Rule #4: Self-administered behavioural change: by the people for the people. We empower the organisation to own the change themselves  We help them prepare a self governing behavioural change statement of intent, and rules of engagement to deliver this with shared ownership.

EXAMPLE

All activities above a certain level of investment were required to be run through a post evaluation against three levels

• Results against activity objectives and KPIs

• Quality of execution support

• Activity field / sales execution and actions

This exercise enabled our client over time to identify success models (a specific approaches / activities that have been tested and proven to drive category sales and volume) across all key areas of marketing activity: assortment, price, promotion, in-store presentation. This were then

EXAMPLE:

Recent changes in alcohol restrictions for our client had significantly impacted the retail and shopper landscape, and the ability to conduct business.

The first exercise we undertook was to run a shopper research study to identify where the new barriers and triggers to purchase existed. To ensure ‘speed to insight’ with a sizeable sample, the exercise was conducted through an on-line panel.

Within 6 weeks of the restrictions coming in to effect, we had insights from the shopper research study, and they were packaged into a set of execution guidelines and rolled out across the entire sales force.

Additionally

• It was mandated that head office staff increase their frontline focus, requiring time be spent in field on sales rep work-with’s, and engaging customers

• Specific KPIs on quality of execution were introduced

• Competitiveness of sales people was dialled up through targeted incentives

Once the recovery plan is implemented, you need to figure out quickly what’s working with the new plan and what’s not contributing to an immediate change in performance. Underlying actions should be reviewed alongside KPI performance, to ensure issues in capabilities and understanding are not hindering the recovery, e.g.

• Has what’s been agreed in the board room been executed in-store?

• How aligned are all departments in ensuring that strategies and plans are actually being executed correctly?

Initially, periodic reviews should be planned at a much shorter interval than traditional monthly or quarterly business cycles, starting with weekly or bi-weekly short sharp decision-making sessions: what’s working, and needs to continue, and what’s not working, and needs to change quickly.

PACH Solutions believe evaluating and learning from both success and failure is as important as initiating any business action in the first place. To facilitate this, we have developed the tried and tested TRAK system, to help companies implement an agreed strategy, to diagnose where the implementation needs to improve, and to course correct speedily. (Link)