2 Minute Read

A breakthrough company is one that grows revenues and profits by ten times in 5 years.  More importantly, they all follow a common path to do it.  We at Aspire Software are practicing these strategies and we see that they readily apply to our clients in the Green Industry.

How to get ordinary people to do extraordinary things.

The Breakthrough Company

This is the essence of the Breakthrough Company.  In a five-year study of small to medium-sized businesses, the authors discovered a select group of breakthrough companies.  They found that these companies are unique in that they are accelerating growth while so many more are slogging along watching profits sag, revenue growth slow, and their people lacking fire.

What is it that breakthrough companies do that allows them to achieve such spectacular results?

  1. Eliminate the leadership bottleneck and the cult of pleasing the boss… and instead focus on pleasing the customer.  It sounds simple, but companies start to slog when they over-manage and forget to listen to and anticipate changing customer tastes and needs.
  2. Don’t get fat and happy.  Too often initial success breeds risk aversion…  “Let’s not lose what we’ve made.”  A good poker player doesn’t sit on his stack, instead he continues to make smart bets.  Success can breed inertia and instead of sitting pretty breeds you end up sitting ugly.
  3. Involve your team in making strategy and cut them in on the action to build excitement and “closing time” character.  Closing Time character - A customer walks into your shop at 10 minutes to closing time needing help.  What happens?  (A.)  Come back tomorrow we are closed.  (B.) Let’s see what we can do in ten minutes.  (C.)  Let’s get it fixed (regardless of how much past closing time it takes).  What’s your character right now? A, B, or C?  Character as they say is destiny.
  4. Navigating growth from small guy to big guy is not easy.  Lots of customers prefer small vendors because of the personal touch the big boys lack.  You have to decide what “small company” experiences you must maintain to keep your customers as you grow while minimizing the cost of keeping that personal service level.  This is strategy – finding out what really matters and investing in the systems that can standardize it is – customer loyalty.
  5. Strategy is the plan a company puts together to WIN.  Breakthrough companies create strategy with a broad group of people, not just the wise men at the top.  The focus is on creating ideas, executing those ideas, appraising results, and adjusting.  The emphasis is on action, execution and follow-through… not on meetings and talk.  Changing direction is hard.  But the breakthrough company approach makes it less painful.

That’s it! As you might imagine, there is so much more to it - details, methods and stories of how you can become a breakthrough company.  We think it works.  Aspire Landscape business management software has been successful in our first three years by applying these ideas.  Like anyone else we have a lot to learn and if you are like us, we are ready to learn more.

Are you ready to learn more?

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Kevin Kehoe

Kevin Kehoe