NARROW YOUR FOCUS AND GROW YOUR ORGANIZATION

Anthony Gizinski

Vice President

Fidelity Bank

anthonyg@fidelitybankmn.com

fidelitybankmn.com

Topic: Banking / Finance

Small businesses are challenged with finding growth opportunities in today’s economy. Making drastic changes to the business plan can be intimidating, but staying competitive may mean looking beyond the way things have always been done.

Background: Reside is a 10-yr old web consulting firm, with historical expertise in a variety of areas, including website design, SEO, email marketing, web portals, and CRM implementation. www.residesolutions.com

Challenge: Reside was “good” at a lot of things, but the company’s broad focus prevented them from being truly “great” at any of them. With revenues flattening and the economy on the decline, Reside’s leadership recognized the need to refocus for growth.

Solution: Working through the EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) process, which was implemented earlier in the year, the executive team made an honest inventory of the company’s values, goals, vision, and core capabilities.

Based on these critical inputs, a fresh business plan was articulated which narrowed the company’s offerings from a broad range of web services to a niche subset of cloud services, specifically for the salesforce.com technology platform. It was this area of the business that showed the greatest traction, most market opportunity and aligned most closely to Reside’s core capabilities.

The transformation from “broad web services” to “niche cloud services” was not without risk. Reside did experience some employee attrition as a result of the refocus. The company had to make investments in new marketing/communication elements, as well as several strategic hires that would bolster their new focus. They even had to turn away some prospects that didn’t fit their new model, referring them to trusted industry partners who could better meet their needs.

Was it worth the risk? The proof is in the numbers: In the 12 months since the company’s transition, Reside has experienced a 44% increase in revenues and has hired an additional 30 employees to keep up with demand for services. They have opened a second Minneapolis office, and continue to recruit to build their team of highly-specialized cloud experts.

Lessons Learned

• Process matters. When setting or re-setting a business plan, any size business will benefit by leveraging a decision-making/management tool. Tested models – like EOS as used by Reside – provide the framework for harnessing all the moving parts of a business to focus it in one direction.

• Don’t be afraid to say “No” to new business that would take you off-focus. When you do so, you’re really saying “Yes” to better opportunities that will grow your business.

• Be great! Good enough usually isn’t in today’s economy. Differentiate and compete by defining what you’re best at – and then make the investment to ensure you deliver on that claim.