Business may be generally good, but there’s a problem; your business isn’t growing like it was. This might be due to a natural process, expected and planned for, such as when products go out of fashion or the technology they use simply becomes uncompetitive or obsolete. Sometimes though, it may happen more unexpectedly and you may not understand why. Or, you may feel you need some extra help in developing a new growth plan. This is where the Adjustment Agency can help.

Looking for renewed growth

Revenues growth stalling for a line of business can be down to a completely different set of issues than those attributed to a business or product line in general decline, as we outlined in an earlier service and is something of a more urgent nature.

Here are likely a number of culprits we can identify, some concerning the lifecycle of the product or service in question, others related to the product itself and how it is marketed. There’s also always the chance there’s something drastically wrong with your sales or distribution strategy.

Whatever the issue, a product line that is no longer likely to generate the growth the company needs to meet its targets, especially if it was a ‘cash cow’ to the company. Is a problem that needs adjusting. And, sometimes it may only need a relatively small adjustment. 

We’d expect you to have already attempted to make your own changes and maybe they have worked to a degree. However, when a company has been heavily reliant on a revenue stream for a period of time, it can be difficult to make changes that may break what was once a successful product line. This is where we can help. 

Our approach is to understand and acknowledge the attempts you have made to correct the problem. However, we also appreciate that it’s easier for those such as ourselves, not so close to the business, to see through to potential issues whose remedies can be harder to accept.  We’ll attempt to identify these and put together a realistic plan to either resolve them or look at the options to shift strategies. 

When a Brand tires

We’ve met numerous business owners that are quite shocked that a product or even their brand as a whole, is no longer performing as expected. Maybe they expected this to happen and accepted things would have to change at some point, but it has happened earlier than thought.

The fact is, Brands do get tired if they are not continually reinvigorated. Today’s market environments move fast, driven by consumers or clients that have fast evolving expectations. We are all subject to a barrage of new innovations, driven by technology, social pressures and lifestyles in general. This makes us less likely to accept the status quo with a brand, unless you’re fortunate to be one of the few luxury brands with timeless qualities. 

This can be very hard to accept as a business owner. For small business owners, the first signs of this may be the loss of long-time clients to competitors. The red flag for these owners is when they themselves have not recognised the other companies as actual competitors. This is a tell-tale sign that the business owner has fallen out of touch with their market and customer expectations and needs.

How the Adjustment Agency can help

Often we are required to act as what we like to call “Chief Reality Officers”. It can be very hard for some business owners to accept the reality of their situation. This can be extremely dangerous, as for now, the problem may be relatively straightforward to correct. Left too long however, and the business could fall into terminal decline.

Our role would be to examine the current performance of the brand in question, or perhaps just a product or service stream, and identify exactly why there’s a problem. We’ll take your input and thoughts, bear them in mind, but take a holistic view of the problem so we are unlikely to miss issues that may have been dismissed by the management today.

Expect us to ask sensitive questions, we won’t be afraid to tell you what you need to hear as opposed to what you want to hear. If we didn’t, there’d be no point in hiring us. When we report back on our findings, we’ll also provide a range of options that could lead to a solution or a change in strategy.

Overall, our objective is to identify why the situation has occurred and what aspects of your strategy or implementation have led to the current issue. While a solution may be to bring in a brand or marketing expert to reshape or re-invigorate your brand or product line, we want to make sure that they have a solid base of facts to work with as opposed to a set of untested assumptions.