It feels great when your business is growing, getting new customers and adding employees. You’re executing on the company’s vision, and your strategy is paying off. Even though growth brings its own set of challenges, everyone associated with the business is having fun.Things are good.
Inevitably, however, your business will hit a plateau.
All of the growth and excitement will come to a standstill because the people, processes and systems that got you this far are not the ones that will enable you to take the next leg of the journey. This usually causes a lot of uncertainty and anxiety. And for a good reason. What you’ve built seems to no longer be cutting it. Markets change, new competitors emerge, and you hit the occasional innovation roadblock. Not to mention the typical challenges that come with scaling an increasingly complex organization.
It’s usually at this juncture when most companies begin entertaining the possibility of selling the business. Sometimes selling is in line with the entrepreneur’s original plans. Other times, however, selling becomes an escape for an entrepreneur who’d like to grow the business further but doesn’t know how.
For businesses that want to stay around — that want to have a lasting brand with a significant impact — this is where you have to dig deep and evolve.
I talk a lot about the “S-curve” to describe a common growing pain businesses face. It’s the model used to describe, and sometimes predict, the performance of a company. The S-curve charted graphically, shows an initial rising slope of a steep mountain followed by a plateau at the summit.
When Infusionsoft started, there was no market for all-in-one sales and marketing software for small businesses. We needed to create the market, and create it we did. This led to years of stellar growth as we rode the wave of market leadership.
After a…