Your Greatest Prospects Could Be Accidents. Audit the Income Earlier than You Plan What Comes Subsequent

Growth can turn accidental customers into a permanent market position. Trace every revenue line to learn which choices are strategic and repeatable.

EXPERT OPINION BY BRUCE ECKFELDT, INC. 5000 CEO AND STRATEGIC BUSINESS COACH @BECKFELDT

Ask a founder-CEO why their company serves the customers it does, and you’ll probably get a history lesson rather than a straight answer. I’m guilty of falling into this trap too. In my own company, one project led to another, which led to another client, and before I knew it, I had a business.

I did not see it clearly until I read Playing to Win, by A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin. The book came out of a giant consumer goods company, but it holds up at a much smaller scale because it treats strategy as a chain of choices rather than a plan. It now comes up in nearly every strategy conversation I have with clients.

Here’s how I see this phenomenon playing out at founder-led companies—and how to reverse engineer a chain of choices into a proactive strategy.

An early customer chose your vertical for you.

A company’s first serious client often pulls the company toward work it never set out to do. Capability follows the revenue, and within two years, you are credible in a market you never targeted.

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The founder of a medical communications agency told me his company traces back to one phone call. He and his partner set out to build an online marketplace for their industry, and four weeks in, a large pharmaceutical company called for help launching a product. They scrapped the plan and built the agency that client needed. A hundred employees later, that call was still why the company did what it did.

A hire brought a customer list.

A salesperson or senior operator often arrives carrying accounts, and the company inherits a segment along with the person. The revenue lands immediately, so no one examines it.

The segment outlasts the hire. Two years after that person leaves, you are still serving those accounts and calling that market a strategic focus, though no one chose it.

Source: www.inc.com