Growth Opportunities for 2012

Despite the doom and gloom merchants who seem to be surrounding us today about where the economy is going and for how long we will have to live in recession there are still may areas of growth. Not everyone and everything is in recession. So I thought I would share a few strategic thoughts as to where I see growth in 2012.

In every market their are always growth opportunities, even if it is just for insolvency practitioners, accountants and journalists! But, ignoring these sectors where is real growth coming from? It does not take long before you can see that if you want to look for growth, you just need to look beyond the news headlines.


Headlines Aren't Real

Headlines tell (and continuously repeat) what's happening as an average across the entire economy, so slow growth coupled with a reduction of public sector spending means that slow adapting traditional companies will be feeling the pinch, particularly if their growth has disproportionately come from public sector spending. The key reason why headlines aren't real is that they only really report bad news (apart from that final ahhh... story) put in for the human touch element.  Bad news sells and grabs headlines, while success never gets a mention. 

Headlines only show averages and I've never met anyone who is average. No-one is ever average and so no business is ever average. So when looking for growth and success turn off the TV, radio and throw away the newspaper and on line news and start by looking at what's happening in the real economy.

Retailing

The high street is dead according to the every expert with up shops empty or closed and yet people still shop in ever increasing numbers and we are building more of them than ever before. Go tell companies like Apple, John Lewis or any of the major supermarket chains about the collapse of retail and they will laugh out loud at you. Retail is not dead, it is just changing and changing faster than many retailers can adapt.

Twenty years ago I worked with retailers advising them to add more value by making their stores more consumer friendly with information and better zoned retailing layouts. Today, retailers need to be adapting to embrace a web active consumers, bricks with clicks stores like John Lewis who will have grown their online e-commerce business to be around 20% of their business integrating it with their modern well designed retail estate. To ignore online in many sectors is like King Canute trying to hold back the tide, but working with it you can appeal to many customer groups by using online an integral part of the retail experience.            
Successful retailers are providing modern inviting retail spaces with mixed offerings of retail and consumption are doing well, particularly as part of larger venues. Strategically the big are getting bigger and the others must look to diversify. The number of retail environments is increasing, with many others planned.  The changing nature of our retail environment to larger integrated retail centres which is the key driver of change as consumers move from convenience shopping to shopping as an experience event, 2012 will see that strategic shift accelerate, Click here to see local data company You tube explanation for more details.   

Consumer

Knowing where the consumer is going in 2012 is vital for success for many UK businesses. Consumers are buying more and more high quality items. Luxury top-end brands are growing fast and the UK has several strengths to capitalise on, companies like the revitalised TATA Jaguar / Land Rover Group of top end vehicles has never been stronger, both at home and abroad. Land Rover's new Evoque for example had a pro-order of 27,000 vehicles, and both companies are investing in new plant and new models.

This changing shift in purchasing behaviour opens business opportunities for forward thinking business owners to look at higher value consumption, top-end brands are growing globally at over 20% with our ability to design great products is a great strength, from fashion to architecture we are world class and the opportunities for growth are significant.

 The Green Market
The green agenda is also a huge growth market in the UK, and its not just solar panels, although this is a great success and one which will survive the Governments ill-judged slashing of the Feed In Tariff (FIT). peopel buying green products and ethical, traditional and home made sre all opportunities for 2012.

The Green agenda, being promoted long-term through the Green Deal, where not only green products are going but also where huge growth for the home improvement market will come from in 2012, supported by new financial channels opening up to fund these domestic sector.

If you would like to learn more about consumer growth trends then here is a good source of of trends for 2012 at trend watching.

Mobile Markets 
The growth of SMART mobile phones is now a major emerging market, this growth currently 650 million in use set to grow to 1.3billion by 2016 provides a whole new market to exploit.

As the world goes mobile so whole new markets are emerging, from gambling to live offers and app building mobile customers are one huge growth market which smart companies are getting into.   

Exporting

Exporting, that old business strategy chestnut is always a mythical panacea for any struggling economy and a favourite for politicians looking for a quick solution to any problem.

Exporting though is not a catch-all, for example exporting to Greece may not be the best idea in the near future, but to elsewhere provides an excellent opportunity for UK business to exploit. BRIC countries, (Brazil, Russia, India and China) provide excellent opportunities for growth. These countries are developing huge new middle classes looking for the type of products which we design, make and retail.

Companies such as Paul Smith have demonstrated an excellent business strategy of balancing their business model with the classic third, third, third split of income which is up £20 million to £196 million this year evenly split across UK, EU and rest of world (ROW). By balancing their income streams they have driven their profits to £24 million this year.

Don't be frightened of looking at export markets as a strategy, we are an excellent exporting nation, people love British products, from cutting edge technology to fashion through to our heritage and education and you should be looking at these opportunities in 2012.       

  

Growth in the Middle East


The middle East is a new emerging market as it redefines itself after the impact of the Arab Spring in 2011. Companies such as Coca-Cola which is currently investing nearly $1 billion in the Middle East, click here for article. With oil becoming even more important supported with stable high prices, countries such as MENA (Middle East and North Africa) provide growth opportunities for UK companies. Their growing populations of young well educated and online connected middle classes (Face book and Twitter created and sustained the Arab Spring) these are sensible markets for many businesses to look at moving into.   

Why Strategic Planning Works

There are many sectors of the UK economy which are doing quite well and some are doing better than ever. The companies doing well in our economy demonstrate good strategic planning and are set-up to succeed. They can respond faster to changes and take advantage of changes to and within their markets. For 2012 their are going to be winners and losers as always.

The evidence is that those with a plan to succeed will do better than those without. Those who have a clear well defined strategic plan focused on where they want to go and with a plan to get them there will be more successful than those who wing it. 

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Are you on a MISSION or just a dreamer?

One of the most important pieces of any good business plan is to define what you do and where you are going as a business. If you do not define what you do and where you are going then why should people work with you or for you? Defining your purpose as a business is the clearest statement of intent any director or owner of a business can make, and yet one of the most misunderstood and avoided pieces of any business plan.

Why is it avoided? In my experience directors are most often frightened of making a commitment of what they stand for so as not to alienate any existing or potential customers who may not fit the proposed mission statement. This contradiction, not wanting to say what the primary goal of a business or organization is, means that many companies try to be everything to everyone, ending up being meaningless to everyone.

This failure to define a mission is also one of the biggest limitations companies and organizations have in creating clear blue water between them and other players in their market. It is why so many companies struggle to stand out and then expect someone in marketing to try to answer that question sometime later. It is not up to marketing to define the purpose of any business or organization, they must influence it but it takes leadership from the top for a mission statement to be successful.  It may also be why so many companies have to spend so much on marketing to define them.  

A good mission statement is clear, unambiguous, engaging and relevant to all its key audiences: namely its leadership, senior management, employees, shareholders and customers. A mission and a vision (but more of that later) provides a central definition of what a business or organization delivers.  

Here’s a quick-step guide to creating a mission statement. Creating a Successful Mission Statement

1.     First identify your organization's "strategic advantage" what makes you successful. This is the idea or approach that makes your organization stand out from its competitors; the reason that customers prefer you and not your competitors, what makes you unique, what are your core competencies?

2.     Secondly, identify the key measures of your success. Key success measures by which you can measure, Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s), typically pick 3 to 5 headline measures of performance.     

3.     Thirdly combine your strategic advantage and success measures (KPI's) into tangible and measurable goal.

4.     Define the wording, using clear language, until you have a concise and precise statement of your mission, which expresses your ideas, measures, and desired result.  

5.     Now communicate it effectively so everyone owns the mission statement within the company, make it public and ensure it is owned from the top with passion.

Communicating mission statements effectively to everyone is a defining piece of making the mission live. After all the hard work in having one so often they are filed away, or framed and stuck on the wall and forgotten. Instead successful Mission statements are launched to everyone and owned. 

I’ve run embedding program within companies to ensure that everyone inside businesses and organizations “own” the Mission and build it into their everyday activity.   

If you don’t follow through then all the effort is wasted and the opportunity is lost, so remember to focus on making your mission statement memorable and relevant. The leadership also needs to own the mission statement and make it live throughout the company.

If you do this businesses and companies can achieve significant improvements which can include: building higher loyalty from staff, higher levels of customer service; improved stakeholder and channel support and lower costs for winning new higher value customers. These are just some examples of the benefits from having and using a mission statement successfully at the front end, one other major advantage is that you have a foundation upon which to build your business plan.  

Good Luck: Want to develop your growth plan, use my business planning tool kit, click here to Take the guess work out of your business success 



Richard Gourlay