The Real Drivers of Revenue Growth from the CEO Seat

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. As a guide to the discussion, download our 10th annual workbook, How to Make Your Number in 2017. Turn to the Corporate Strategy section and flip to the Objectives phase on pages 54 – 59 of the PDF workbook.

Joining us today is John DiMarco, Chief Executive Officer for Cedar Document Technologies, 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. 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 put the boat over fish and drop the line in the water to catch 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.

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

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 subpar revenue growth.