OPENING SHOTS
DELIVERING GROWTH STARTS WITH GETTING THE RIGHT
SME STRATEGY M
anaging directors and CEOs of small to medium sized companies, when asked about
THE PROFESSOR STELIOS KAVADIAS COLUMN
SME leaders need to decide who their customers should be and why these customers should prefer them over competitors
their key challenge, tend to describe one of the following three issues in no specified order: lack of sufficient funding, inability to deliver their product or service in larger quantities through their current operations; and limited access to capable people that can support growth. This list shows up so often that it has shaped the discussion agenda around growth or scaling up in the UK. Scaling up may be hindered by the lack of funding, skills and management structure. However, all three reasons listed have one striking commonality: they assume that MDs and CEOs have full clarity in their minds with respect to the growth direction they want to pursue before stumbling on these three issues. Is this the typical situation an SME leader faces?
Reality shows otherwise. Consider the
case of Nick, the MD of a professional services company in the legal space. Nick has followed a typical path of a small to medium sized company. Initial growth has been healthy, led to strong profitability and the natural expansion of the number of employees and clients. The focus of the company has been property law and Nick’s past experience in the insurance industry helped him position their services very competitively. However, after an initial growth period, the number of new clients reduced to small single digits and the respective profit numbers stagnated with volatile ups and downs. Nick has launched into finding out more about how to address this growth plateau. He joined peer groups and attended events. He came across the usual list of challenges mentioned previously. Repeatedly.
14 SME
www.smeweb.com
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