Management Questions

As you consider building your own Value Growth Agenda, ask yourself the following questions:

Competitive position

• Is our market value growing as fast as it could?
• Do investors value our company fairly?
• Are we as profitable as our toughest competitors?
• Are we meeting our revenue and earnings growth targets?
• Have we created barriers to entry for new entrants in our industry?
• Can we pinpoint why customers choose us over our competitors?

Patterns and trends

• Do we regularly track changing customer and technology trends, emerging patterns, or new regulations in the industry?
• How is our business threatened by these changes?
• How are new entrants redefining the traditional rules of success in our industry?
• Is our competitive “radar screen” tracking new, digitally enabled players?
• How are the traditional boundaries of our industry blurring?

Growth strategy development

• Are our strategic goals and financial targets ambitious enough?
• Do senior managers dedicate time to think about and develop new growth opportunities?
• Do we have a clear set of initiatives to improve our current businesses?
• Do we have an attractive set of growth ideas to develop future businesses?
• Is our growth strategy driven by customer priorities rather than by internal core competencies?
• Do we know which growth initiatives will create value beyond what analysts have already factored into our market value?

Growth strategy communication

• Do employees and managers have a clear understanding of our growth strategy?
• Are they excited and motivated by that strategy?
• Are we clearly communicating the strategy to investors?
• Are investors confident in our ability to grow?

Source: Setting the agenda: Finding the right drivers of value growth / Ted Moser and Hanna Moukanas / Mercer Management Journal Issue 13

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• Have you established a program that will recruit the people you want rather than carbon copies of the people you have?
• Do you have experienced reps on the frontline and change agents at the top?
• Is your sales compensation system congruent with your enterprise’s economics?
• Do you review sales force size regularly, particularly with regard to whether the force is flexible enough to handle channel shifts, market changes, and new product launches?
• Can you account for your salespeople’s time, and is it consistently used for high-value tasks?
• Do your sales reps understand how their customers define value, and are they delivering it?
• Does your sales force have all the technology it needs for maintaining efficiency and effectiveness?
• Are your salespeople sufficiently integrated into your organization, and do they get the respect they deserve?

Source: Fixing the Fatal Flaws of Your Sales Force / Simon Goodall, Katrina Helmkamp, Michael Zinser / Boston Consulting Group (BCG), August 15, 2003

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