How to Sustain Double Digit Growth Despite The Recession

I was flying back from Las Vegas on Wednesday after getting some coaching for how to run my growth coaching business on Tuesday and Wednesday.

I had the pleasure of sitting next to a couple of guys from an electronics company that was a contract manufacturer for consumer electronics manufacturers. One of the men was the Vice President of Engineering for the company. I asked him how they were doing in the recession. He said that they didn't miss a tick on the clock and were clipping along at a double digit growth rate, even since September 2008 when the wheels came off the economy. All this while competitors were collectively down 20 to 30%.

I asked him if they were doing certain things like seeking to help customers with their applications, talking with them about designing new and  better products, asking marketing people  what they were thinking of before the products were even submitted to engineering for design. As it turns out, yes, the company was doing all of these things.

But most encouraging, he told me about how they approached the recession.

Double Digit Growth From Doing the Opposite of Competition
"The media was talking about it in late 2008 and our competitors began to cut back inventory and expenses. Their whole mentality changed and they began to shrink back from approaching customers to generate new ways to help them with their products. Our CEO decided to step up our customer contacts."

At that point I drew a diagram of my prototype organization that can be found in my book "Discover Your Core, Then Go For More". I showed the roles of marketing and engineering and added that they needed to get together and go out and see customers in teams to discuss customer needs and design issues and products they hadn't even started designing yet instead of cloistering engineers in their labs and cubicles.

The VP of Engineering wholeheartedly agreed. And instead of the usual lamenting that he agreed but his company had cut back expenses so much there was no money or inclination to do that... he told me that they STEPPED UP the activity and brought home some nice additional business from customers they never sold anything to before in addition to existing customers that gave them more business. The result was sustained double digit growth despite the recession that hit their competitors so hard.

So let's review what happened here.

1. The CEO encouraged it and PARTICIPATED in making many of the calls. This set the tone for the rest of the organization
2. Other key sales and engineering people followed suit.
3. They did the opposite of their competitors, who cut back this activity and cloistered engineers back at the office
4. The tone of the conversation with customers was to help them with design issues: things that added real value for them: they became a strategic advantage for their customer with their core asset: engineers
5. The sales people set up the appointments and the conversations, framing up the conversation so the engineers could enter the conversation and add value.

Textbook execution, but too bad most people do exactly the opposite of this. Somebody can do this. Why not you? Ah, but you need to know how to approach the customers.

First: who really adds value in your company? Not just with products, but in how you serve the customer. You'll be surprised what you can accomplish when you let people that provide solutions, even picking and packing solutions, listen to the customer first hand. Your warehouse manager is an engineer, believe it or not. Give your people a chance to see and respond to the customer. Teach them how to ask the right questions to get the customer to share real issues and show your people what is going on in their place of business first hand.

You can find out more about this technique in my new book "Discover You Core, Then Go For More"  in chapters three and seven. Watch for it. In the meantime, give this a lot of thought. Seeing more customers more often is part of the answer. The other part is how you approach them and with whom. Set up your people to see and hear customer issues first hand and you will be amazed at what they come up with.

Get connected to customers again. Pick the right ones, other people's customers, too. Then get in the right kinds of conversations and investigations.