Not All Revenue Growth is Created Equal

I'm excited to introduce a Chief Executive Officer who knows how to direct his sales force to the highest opportunity revenue sources. Executive leaders of every function should prepare to take notes from today's guest who will share how to think through the highest value creation sources of revenue. In the race to make your number, sales leaders will naturally bet on every horse that can deliver a revenue dollar. Your corporate strategy can quickly erode to the easiest revenue dollars to capture, regardless of the long-term value and profitability. That's where the CEO comes in to guide his or her sales leader to the revenue dollars that create the highest value long-term.

Today we're going to demonstrate how to create clarity throughout the entire company by getting everyone laser focused on the real drivers of revenue growth.

Joining us today is John DiMarco, Chief Executive Officer for Cedar Document Technologies. John and I share the same Alma Mater, Georgia Tech and John is a CEO who came up through the ranks of technology development. What I found fascinating about this interview is the precision with which John breaks down revenue growth to provide clarity to his sales leader. John's Company is a provider of hosted customer communications management services to large enterprises. Cedar serves as a hub to manage all enterprise communications for how an enterprise client talks to its customers and how those customers interact back with those clients. John is uniquely qualified to demonstrate how to create clarity throughout the entire company by getting everyone laser focused on the real drivers of revenue growth.

Listen as John and I dive into the into three main types of CEO-driven revenue growth strategies. We address each with examples to identify the real drivers of revenue growth from the CEO seat. John and I discuss the differences between market expansion, market exposure and market share. I list those three in order because market expansion is the quickest way to create enterprise value shareholder wealth inside of your firm. To illustrate this point, this is where the CEO knows the market so well that he or she can place the boat right over the fish.

Market expansion is Cedar’s main strategy where John has recognized he’s in a market where there are tail winds and he needs to make the most of the opportunity. The market exposure example market demonstrates how John is listening to the market, seeing a movement to mobile and trying to expose his company to that new source of growth. The final strategy of market share gain doesn’t apply to Cedar since it’s an emerging market.

Why this topic? Organizations that have too many objectives and priorities essentially have none. They risk accomplishing nothing of significance. A CEO strategy often does not get executed because the sales, marketing and product leaders are in their silos pursuing what they feel is important. This causes strategic misalignment and results in sub-par revenue growth. T

here's a completely different sales and marketing approach required to accomplish each revenue growth strategy. Sales and marketing leaders that don’t know these details are working blind. Enjoy the dialogue of the Cedar use case to identify your growth strategies.