Ensuring your company avoids hitting a revenue plateau is one of your most important roles as company CEO or President. For larger or market dominating companies it can happen when markets or product lines mature and the battle for growth is confined to market share take-away (Ford v. Chevy, ATT v. Verizon, IBM v. HP). However for companies selling ground-breaking products or services or targeting growing markets, revenue plateaus are far more likely the result of two scenarios.
1. A company’s ability to drive and internalize innovation.
2. How a company determines and executes its sales strategy.
Focusing on the latter challenge, we see similar situations that either impact or expose sales strategy as the reason companies hit a revenue plateau. Following are five of the more common ones, each of which can be addressed by developing the right sales strategy ahead of time.
Situations When Companies Hit The Revenue Plateau
- Highly successful start-ups that have out-grown the founders time to function as sales leader and chief executive.
- Companies founded on a great product or service but have now saturated their initial target market.
- Organizations that initially grew on the Rolodex of the leadership team but are now out of viable contacts to sell to.
- Firms under new executive leadership, ownership or board of directors.
- Businesses undergoing major structural or organizational changes, i.e. realigning, combining or shedding business units.
Facing any of these challenges right now? Formalizing or updating your company’s sales strategy can help you avoid the dreaded revenue plateau.