Classic growth strategies are centered on the market offering. The company develops and markets an innovative product or service, expands distribution globally, and, in time, acquires other companies to gain market share.

These strategies can still be useful, but now their role is primarily to defend existing revenues, profits, and market share as commoditization and increasingly fierce competition make inroads. The classic growth strategies can no longer drive major growth because of market saturation, information clutter, mature global markets, and high stock valuations that make acquisitions less cost-effective than they once were.

What's needed is to adopt customer-centered strategies to create new growth by creating new value for customers. The idea is to start with existing product or service positions and look for opportunities that benefit your customer's cost structure by reducing or eliminating process inefficiencies or reducing complexity. Can you help the customer make better decisions? What can you do to speed the customer's products/services to market?

The end result will be to create a new growth platform that expands the market boundaries by focusing on the next customer needs. The platform will also increase the customer base by redefining the customer.

Strategies and messaging appropriate to both sales people and to the marketing communications program are then critical to telling a product/services story that will persuade prospects of the value of the new product or services.


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