By Michael Briggin
As companies evolve from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises, how they plan for growth is contingent on what enterprises they aim to be. However, running a business isn’t exactly a walk in the park when it comes to how it’s being led.
If you’re on the founding team of your startup and are keeping a close eye out for how you anticipate it should evolve, it’s important to pay attention to the leadership your organization needs to carry out for your goals.
Analyze Your Marketing Strategy
Assuming you’ve already accomplished marketing for a period of time and have been able to get measurable results from the campaigns, focusing on your marketing strategy is the first step to understanding where you need to plan for growth.
In order to know what the appropriate marketing strategy that works best for you, here’s a few questions you might want to ask yourself:
- What need does your product fill?
- Are you marketing a B2B or B2C product?
- Are you targeting the right customers?
- Which customers are the most challenging? And why?
- What’s unique about your product that similar products from other businesses cannot fulfill?
- Do you need to continue to penetrate your target market? Or enter new markets? Or both?
Define What Your Operation Needs Are
Ideally, your startup should at forming departments with leaders in each as follows:
Accounting – As revenue comes in, a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) will be needed in order so that an accounting department can keep track of the revenue, profit margins and cash flow accordingly as revenue is generated.
Marketing – Whether it be through inbound and outbound marketing, generating awareness about your product will need a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), VP of Marketing or similar C-Level role with emphasis in leading the marketing department to bring in relevant revenue opportunities.
Product – Although product development is technically under the umbrella of marketing, it itself is typically representative of a different department. A VP of Product in this case will be needed in order to manage and help product managers
Sales – Like product, sales is also under the umbrella of marketing. Here, it’s important to have a VP of Sales who can be able to help lead business development and sales opportunities while being able to handle the pressure on bringing in numbers.
Preparing For And Embracing Change
All organizations, not just startups, face change at some points in their lifecycle. Therefore, if there are challenges down the road when you’re in growth mode it doesn’t mean your startup is failing.
Redefining your focus on your growth goals and innovation should not wait. Being decisive as you plan for your organization’s success should come as quickly as possible instead of falling to the path of complacency.
