CREATING JOBS CHANGING LIVES

Next-Generation FellowshipProgram

Managing Growth
and Targeting

Ignite. Week9
https://www.wfglobal.org

WADHWANI FOUNDATION |CREATING JO BSCHANGING LIVES

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 CONCEPTS
● Grow, Scale, Succeed - Managing Growth and Scaling your start-up
● Customer acquisition strategy
● Process Efficiency
● Operational excellence

By the end of the week,

you will be able to:
▪ Devise a Growth Plan
▪ Structure your Scaling Strategy
▪ Devise a Customer acquisition strategy
▪ Monitor KPIs and enhance Productivity via
Process improvements, Operational
Excellence, and Managing Sales &
Distribution

Steps:
1. Revisit your sales plan to ensure increase in
sales and revenue
2. Devise a customer acquisition strategy
using the given template
3. Monitor your key KPIs and track progress
using the given template

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 Managing Growth
and Scaling Up Creatinga Crafting
Revisiting Customer Inexpensive Prepare for
Sales Plan Acquisition Marketing Operational
Strategy Strategies Excellence

Running a successful startup, sustaining business growth and eventually scaling up is a

constant endeavor. While many entrepreneurs thrive well, it is extremely challenging to
offbeat certain unexpected market/environment changes to stay consistent.

Growth is one of the most important elements that any business needs to survive the
competition, stand out and eventually be profitable. Startups stand out due to their
potential to scale up very rapidly. But there are obviously certain factors which are
deemed necessary for the organization to make up for the unicorn club.
Whether or not you have dreams to become a member of the unicorn club, transforming
your startup into a successful business requires your company to go through three
different stages, mainly – traction, transition, and growth.

Growth trajectories differ in various industries. However, in order to embark on a

journey of sustainable business growth, all startups can take a few calculated steps that
help them become consistent players. Startups need to take informed action based on
data and keep track of the key metrics to measure and protect their success.

Here’s a 8-step process startups must follow to manage growth and to scale up
exponentially:

Step 1: Revisit Your Sales plan

Step 2: Formulate your Customer Acquisition Strategy
Step 3: Reducing Churn
Step 4: Adopt Inexpensive Marketing Strategies
Step 5: Be abreast with latest Technologies
Step 6: Invest in Human Capital
Step 7: Know when to Pivot

WADHWANI FOUNDATION | CREATING JOBS CHANGING LIVES 4

Managing Growth
and Scaling Up Creatinga Crafting
Revisiting Customer Inexpensive Prepare for
Sales Plan Acquisition Marketing Operational
Strategy Strategies Excellence

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 Re-visit your Revisiting
Sales Plan
Creatinga
Customer
Acquisition
Crafting
Inexpensive
Marketing
Prepare for
Operational

Sales Plan
Strategy Strategies Excellence

Let's assume that you have sketched your business

model, built and refined your prototype, and
created a fascinating Business Plan.

Business planning begins with Sales Planning. A

sales plan consists of a sales forecast and a plan to
achieve the forecast. A sales forecast is a
projection of the number of units of products or
service you want to sell in a given period. Sales
planning is divided into two parts:

1. Sales Forecasting - Forecasting your sales

for the next one year
2. Customer Acquisition Funnel - Planning the
number of leads you will need to meet your
sales target. A customer acquisition funnel is a
plan for how you want to go about achieving or
exceeding what you had forecasted.

You will need to revisit your sales forecasting numbers and evaluate your acquisition
strategy in order to stay up-to-date with your sales numbers and continuously try to
retain existing customers and acquire new ones.

Reflect on your status quo by comparing your sales forecasting numbers with the actual
sales. Re-evaluate your strategy, your numbers, and your channels to reach the
maximum outreach for better sales. Use the Sales Plan template to key in updated
metrics and challenge yourself. Change your channels if needed, to increase your sales.

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Customer acquisition
Strategy Revisiting
SalesPlan
Creatinga
Customer
Acquisition
Strategy
Crafting
Inexpensive
Marketing
Strategies
Prepare for
Operational
Excellence

According to HubSot, “Customer acquisition is the process of bringing new customers or

clients to your business. The goal of this process is to create a systematic, sustainable
acquisition strategy that can evolve with new trends and changes.”

You have more influence on your existing customers to sell your products/services,
compared to new customers with whom you are yet to build a relationship, and can cost
at least 5 times more than actually retaining an existing one. That said, existing
customers are 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more, compared to
new customers.

But retaining existing customers comes with its own challenges. Tough competition or life
events make customer retention extremely difficult. Hence, adding new customers into
your sales funnel becomes crucial. But how do you achieve this?

Here is a 4-step process to help you acquire new customers:

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Customer acquisition
Strategy Revisiting
SalesPlan
Creatinga
Customer
Acquisition
Strategy
Crafting
Inexpensive
Marketing
Strategies
Prepare for
Operational
Excellence

Step 1: Determine your customer needs

Getting to understand what exactly your customer needs are, could get a bit tricky at
times. The best way to understand what your customer wants, is to ASK. To do this,
either you can send a small questionnaire or survey, or hire an external analytics agency
to get you the correct demographic, customer credit data, and other relevant details for
you to analyze your customer needs.

When you add or acquire a new customer segment you should always create a new
business model canvas. So, as many canvases as customer segments. This is
because you may need to customize your solution block or look at new channels for
distributing your product.

Step 2: Use Multiple Channels:

For a vast outreach, you must use multiple channels such as direct mail, email and
social media ads. Once you have identified customer needs, the contact strategy could
be customized on a 1/5/20 strategy, which means one direct mail piece, five emails,
and 20 social media ads sent out to each prospect.

Step 3: Use the Lifetime Value Rule:

Determine your Customer Lifetime Value. You should limit your acquisition spending
to no more than 25% of the lifetime value of your custom ers. So, if you have an
auto lender that averages $4,000 in lifetime margin, your budget should be under
$1,000 per new customer acquired.

Customer acquisition strategy in hyper-local business

Arunabh Sinha I Founder & CEO I Uclean

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Customer acquisition
Strategy Revisiting
SalesPlan
Creatinga
Customer
Acquisition
Strategy
Crafting
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Strategies
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Operational
Excellence

Step 4: Find accurate contact information

The best way to find accurate contact information such as home address (direct mail), their
primary email account (email), and social media accounts is to find the names and
addresses of your prospects, add birthdates and email addresses, and use this list to match
to online sources. Listed companies such as Experian, Acxiom or Wunderman Data, can
provide you with a list of your prospects irrespective of geography. Using name and
birthdate, you can find 80% of your prospects on social media advertising platforms like
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc.

For a business to grow and increase its revenue, acquiring new customers is pivotal.

How to Reduce Customer Acquisition Costs

with SEO (entrepreneur.com)
Source: Enrepreneur.com

The Power Of Partnerships For Customer

Acquisition (forbes.com)
Source: Forbes

How to Disrupt Your Sales Funnel for Better

Results (entrepreneur.com)
Source: Entrepeneur.com

How To Keep Customer Acquisition Costs Low

While Growing A Community (forbes.com)
Source: Forbes

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 Reducing Churn
Creatinga Crafting
Revisiting Customer Inexpensive Prepare for
SalesPlan Acquisition Marketing Operational
Strategy Strategies Excellence

To increase loyalty, businesses must realize that their relationship with the customer
does not end with closing a sale. In fact, that's where it actually begins.

So once you have successfully made a sale by converting a lead into a customer, both
you and the customer are happy. But, imagine if this customer suddenly decides to
cancel the subscription and stop using your product after only a couple weeks. It is a
matter of concern. You need to find out where did things go wrong?

This is a common problem many businesses encounter. Customer retention is just as

important as acquiring them and generating sales.

Apple sold $52.6 Billion worth of sales in Q4 2017. That’s a 12% increase from the
previous year. The reason behind Apple’s continuous success is its loyal and passionate
customers who not only love Apple products but appreciate their after-sale services.

Building your customer loyalty towards your brand is one thing that will ensure that
they buy your products for a long period of time.

Here are a few quick tips on how to reduce customer churn and to build long-lasting
customer relationships.

1. Use a CRM software

Continuing to keep your customer relationships stronger is the key to build loyalty and
promote your brand. While email automation provides a great way to keep in touch with
your customers, CRM (Customer Relationship Management Software) comes in
very handy to collect and store your customer information for a seamless database
management.

The CRM software lets you record customer interactions such as email discussions,
social media interactions, and many more options to explore. This allows you to
understand your customers better so that when a customer is about to cancel a
subscription you can address the problems upfront and offer immediate resolution to
avoid a churn.

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 Reducing Churn
Creatinga Crafting
Revisiting Customer Inexpensive Prepare for
SalesPlan Acquisition Marketing Operational
Strategy Strategies Excellence

You can probe the customer by asking a few questions like;

“Was the price too high?”
“Do you need help with the product usage?”
“What could we do to improve?”

Learning about the problems your customers were having will provide you a chance to
improve your product and also refrain other customers from leaving your brand.

2. Offer excellent customer support

Customer support is an important aspect of any business, and yet a challenging task
where many businesses fail. There are modern startups and businesses that still provide
customer support via email and phone calls, where they take more than 24 hours to
respond to an email or where you have to waste time and money waiting hours on the
phone. These are some of the influencers that force customers to leave you.

Great businesses have a strong Customer Support team, which proactively works on
solving customer problems in a matter a minutes. It can be as simple as sending a
Tweet or a direct message via Facebook, or providing live-chat support on your website
with friendly and experienced staff.

Nowadays, it is easier to know customer reviews/feedback oon a click of a button. Many

take to Facebook or Twitter to share their frustration. As a brand, you can reach out to
these customers and offer solutions by staying active and alert on social media.

3. Reward your most loyal customers

Imagine if a company sends you a free gift card or free access to a premium product
just for doing business with them. Isn’t that wonderful? You can use this same tactic to
build trust and loyalty. This is not a costly process at all. Many businesses already have
their own unique customer reward programs that encourages customers to keep
using their products and also bring in new customers for free.

Dropbox used their referral program with this strategy. Whenever a user referred the
platform to a friend, the platform would award the user with 500mb of free cloud
storage space. Within the first 18 months, Dropbox received 2.8 Million referral invites.
32% of all Dropbox user signups come via the referral program. Isn’t that amazing?

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 Reducing Churn
Creatinga Crafting
Revisiting Customer Inexpensive Prepare for
SalesPlan Acquisition Marketing Operational
Strategy Strategies Excellence

4. Offer discounted extensions

Businesses that offer free plans or free trials of products often encounter users
who tend to leave when the trial ends or they try to stick with the free plans forever.
You can get these users to switch to a better plan by offering a small bribe.

This bribe can be sent in the form of a discount. Evernote encourages its free users to
upgrade to its Premium plan by offering a 40% discount. You can use this same
strategy to keep users from leaving by offering a discounted price to extend their
subscriptions.

Creating YouTube videos and blog posts showing the awesome features of your paid
plan is another great way to get users interested in your premium products.

5. Ask for feedback

You can’t keep everyone from leaving. Some users will leave no matter what you do to
try and save the customer. The wise thing to do here is to learn from them by asking
what went wrong.

This is the main reason why you often see feedback forms when you unsubscribe from
an email list or decide to cancel a subscription to an online service.

Polls and surveys are also great solutions for learning more about what frustrates your
customers and finding out what kind of features they would like to see in your future
updates. Recognize customer churn before it’s too late and take necessary action to
prevent it. Establishing a plan to increase customer loyalty will help you save a lot of
revenue while creating a group of passionate customers.

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Inexpensive Marketing
Strategies for Growth
Creatinga Crafting
Revisiting Customer Inexpensive Prepare for
SalesPlan Acquisition Marketing Operational
Strategy Strategies Excellence

“Start with zero money, grow with your clients’ money, and scale with your
investors’ money”

According to Forbes, 90% businesses fail due to poor or no brand marketing.

Businesses usually make a mistake of not focusing much on their brand marketing
strategies. That doesn’t mean that it has to be expensive.

Advertising has always been a critical success factor for the growth of any business.
While this may seem tedious and a waste of resources, it can be bring in that difference
between sustained growth and total failure. Low-budget options for effective marketing
include social media sharing, influencer partnerships, content marketing and mobile app
development. Remember that you don’t have to drop hundreds of thousands on
celebrity endorsements right away. Start by recruiting notable influencers first and work
your way up.

Before you spend any money on advertising, get to know your target audience deeply.
Once you know who and what you’re targeting, you can prioritize marketing tasks so
that your customers get the maximum benefit. Don’t be afraid to use creative
marketing tactics, especially in the beginning! They can garner a lot of attention.

Here are 4 important marketing strategies that can elevate your sales numbers and
thereby increase revenues.

1. PR via media mentions

Public relations is one of the most effective ways a startup can amp up its authority in
search engines and even close deals with partners and investors. Also, it ensures that
when prospects search your brand, they find quality and credible articles by renowned
sources, such as Forbes and Techcrunch.

Think of this as early birds during music festivals. Being an early bird has several perks.
The same goes with PR. Implementing one before the official launch renders the benefit
of shorter agency retainers. Also, you get a wealth of timely consultations and advice.
The top priority of PR is to enhance brand awareness. Therefore, what it can do is put
forth a favorable image for your startup. But, it is also important to understand that PR
efforts take time. PR is a marathon, not a sprint. The team needs a story to push and
then follow through. Although PR activities can happen at any stage, it is best when
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pursued at the customer creation stage. In addition to this, startups should also look
PR firms that can support crowdfunding campaigns.
 Inexpensive Marketing
Strategies for Growth
Creatinga Crafting
Revisiting Customer Inexpensive Prepare for
SalesPlan Acquisition Marketing Operational
Strategy Strategies Excellence

2. Email Targeting
The old-school tactic of cold emailing still stands prevalent. Email marketing is
voluminous and helps with groundwork. It marks one of the quickest ways of capturing
client information and data. But, here’s the downfall; emails tend to go unchecked.

So, perform thorough research for your business and its target audience. In doing so,
study the demographic and psychographic aspects of the customers. Once done, next
comes building a list for a pre-launch. One way of getting around is to create an email
waiting list, also known as a soft launch. Doing that enables the startup to test the
waters and gauge customer reactions. In this stead, enterprises get insights about which
aspects of their renderings need to be tweaked to suit the larger market. Today, several
email marketing tools can help curate a successful campaign in no time.

When it comes to B2B businesses, building a combination of business networking sites

and email is ideal. Founders at established agencies such as EstablishCred regard it as
an effective way for generating quality leads on demand.

3. Influencer Marketing
Today, influencer marketing stands among the top brand marketing techniques. It is
highly effective in garnering visibility on social media platforms. A reflective growth
engine of sorts, this offers significant exposure and return.

So, choose the right person and fit. And this means the number of followers and the
brand personality. You need not go for top-ranked celebrities with millions of followers.
This can prove exorbitant for startups. A better approach is to pursue nano and micro-
influencers. The way to go about this is to categorize influencers into follower counts.
For instance, 10,000 to 100,000 followers, 100,000 to 250,000, 250,000 to 500,000 and
so forth.

4. Podcasts
There is a world of work that goes into creating an episode of a podcast. But, once the
ball gets rolling, it is smooth sailing. As per a survey, an average listener spends over
one and a half hours daily on podcasts. Also, it calls for the power of persuasion. About
71% of people who hear about a brand on a podcast look it up later. Quite a lot of
podcasts today are targeted at startups and small businesses.

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Inexpensive Marketing
Strategies for Growth
Creatinga Crafting
Revisiting Customer Inexpensive Prepare for
SalesPlan Acquisition Marketing Operational
Strategy Strategies Excellence

Podcasting is beneficial in the following ways:

Authentic and cost-free
Podcasts cut through the clutter and make authentic connections with listeners. Plus,
founders get to put forward their messages to the listeners for free. The podcast can
later get revamped into image quotes and social media posts, for instance. That is, the
content is recyclable. So, podcasts narrate the story, and the images and posts offer the
follow-on!
Networking with industry leaders
Attending a podcast as a guest renders access to bigger circles and an extensive playing
field. It serves as an incredible way of forging connections with the industry bigwigs,
clients and retailers, among interested stakeholders. Also, the founders come out as
thought leaders and get to instill inspiration in the minds of their listeners.
Web traffic
Podcasts also help you pander to worldwide audiences, thereby increasing traffic. In this
way, this makes new audiences come to you.

5. Conversational Messaging
Conversational Messaging is the most prevalent in today’s tech-savvy generation. These
can help your startup engage with customers and users where they already are-- the
messaging app. This needs no visit to the website or the download of a mobile app. You
are engaging with them, the way they would with friends and family.

One of the key areas of focus for a startup is customer/user acquisition. Traditionally,
startups have relied on digital media such as websites and mobile apps and digital
marketing channels such as search, display and social, to find and nurture new
customers. Most of these channels are one-way, i.e., your startup is ‘pushing’ ads and
notifications to your target audience. What if you could have personalized two-way
conversations at scale, with each individual in your target audience? That’s only possible
with the help of Conversational messaging or chatbots, as they are called.

Social media and Partnerships for business growth

Avelo Roy I MD I Kolkata Ventures

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Inexpensive Marketing
Strategies for Growth
Creatinga Crafting
Revisiting Customer Inexpensive Prepare for
SalesPlan Acquisition Marketing Operational
Strategy Strategies Excellence

6. Content Marketing and Enhancing LTV

Content Marketing should be at the heart of your marketing strategy, allowing you to
build a relationship with your target audience, bring your marketing cost down, and
increase your customer lifetime value.

Content marketing is a long-term strategy with the aim of building a strong

relationship with your target audience by providing them with high-quality content that
is very relevant, as often as possible. Basically, content marketing is a way to show your
customers that you actually care about them. Today, more than ever before, people
want to feel like you care about them. The world is louder and noisier. Any kind of
information can be found in milliseconds, and attention is our most valuable resource.
Typically, they would go on Google, typing
something like “birthday ideas for my partner.” At Did you know?
this point, you as a business would like one of
your blog posts titled “Five Best Birthday Presents 81% of shoppers
For Your Loved One” to show up in that search. research online before
That potential buyer would then read some setting foot in a store
interesting content that will trigger emotions, and
immediately create that loyalty to you leading
them to purchase your product or service.

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Inexpensive Marketing
Strategies for Growth
Creatinga Crafting
Revisiting Customer Inexpensive Prepare for
SalesPlan Acquisition Marketing Operational
Strategy Strategies Excellence

Benefits of content marketing:

1. Increased brand awareness leading to higher sales: As prospects and buyers
search the web for answers to their questions and solutions for their problems, your
brand continues to show up.
2. Better and more loyal customers: Content marketing helps to further establish
your brand as a thought leader in your industry, which strengthens relationships with
buyers.
3. Cost saving: It is not a short-term strategy, but over time, a library of great
content will continue to reach more qualified leads and interested buyers, therefore
reducing your paid marketing.

Content marketing should be at the heart of your marketing strategy and, in the long
run, will permit you to build a loyal relationship with your target audience, bringing
your marketing cost down, and increasing your CLTV (customer lifetime value). It is
always recommended that the content is created in-house, especially in the early days,
as no one better than yourself identifies and understands your product or service.
Additionally, doing things in-house will also translate better with your target audience
as that content will feel more “natural/home grown.“

7. Geo-targeting to grow your Business

A significantly effective way to create personalized content and advertisements is by
targeting potential customers based on their location. An imperative element is the
messaging, which needs to be appropriate to the behavior of the people in the location
of interest. This tool allows the marketing specialists or advertisers to create
personalized content and advertisements with high conversion rates. It can be as
simple as showing a different language version of an ad to someone in France versus to
someone in the United States, or it can take into account more complex data such as
various locations a person might frequent and web browser history.

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 Inexpensive Marketing
Strategies for Growth
Creatinga Crafting
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The central idea behind geo-targeting lies in the delivery of the “right message at the
right time” to the right people. It is possible by capturing the IP address of people’s
devices from a specific location or people who have expressed interest in this location for
a reason. Once a platform or application determines the location of a user through their
IP address, wifi or global positioning system, this piece of information is saved to servers
and delivered to adjust the type of content the user views. For example, companies such
as Google and Facebook recognize your phone’s location and send pop-up notifications
and emails promoting physical stores around this location.

Thanks to social media, geo-targeting is now more accessible than ever. Not only is
it useful for local businesses, but large organizations can also put it to good use for
regional campaigns in order to attract and connect with prospects and existing
customers. Location-based content creation is considered cost-effective with a higher
return on investment than a generic campaign, which will not focus on a specific area,
especially for local businesses with a physical presence.

If you are running a business that caters exclusively to customers in one area, then it
would be helpful for you to know what kind of people live nearby and what languages
they speak so that your marketing materials are as relevant as possible for them.

Geo-targeting can help businesses grow by catering to customers in their area, driving
more sales and increasing profit margins. IP exclusion ensures that people working for
the competitor have no chance of viewing your ads, and at the same time, geo-targeting
enables you to promote your content to consumers in that area. This type of strategy is
recommended for businesses in high-competition industries.

Geo-targeting campaigns will enable you to try out different campaigns and test out
their performance. Keep in mind that little details — such as the customs, culture
and correct translation — matter.

Finally, visual elements provide information and complement the messaging.

Personalized design in campaigns can make a tremendous difference in how the brand is
perceived by different people.

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Be Abreast with Latest
Technologies
Creatinga Crafting
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It's a no-brainer that technology is essential for growth and success. Still, a surprising
number of startups don't put enough stock in the importance of keeping up with
constantly changing technology trends.

A recent study suggests that 80% of new businesses are not taking full advantage of
available technologies. For example, startups can utilize new platforms like Zapier to
integrate and automate their flows for a more efficient workday.

Trends like artificial intelligence, automation, and mobile app development are no
longer just icing on the cake for customers, especially in the wake of the global crisis.
Consumers expect things like personalized experiences and convenient mobile apps as
an everyday part of their interactions with your brand.

To keep growing and thriving, startups must continue to invest in new and beneficial
technologies. In some cases, this means that the best plan is to outsource some of your
processes. For other companies, this means putting more value in low-code
development interfaces and test-case management tools like Qase.io.

Salesforce reports that 68% of marketing heads say their brands only stay
competitive and relevant because of their intense focus on customer
experience tech.

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Invest in Human Capital
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SalesPlan Acquisition Marketing Operational
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Acquiring top talent is vital for ongoing success. But this is another step that founders
often hesitate to take. Resources are limited, so it's common to think that it's better to
hire fewer employees and take on more tasks yourself. However, delegation is crucial
for growth. If you don’t hire a team you can trust with delegated tasks, then you won’t
have enough time or resources to focus on scaling your brand.

Founders should also immediately look for the best possible candidates to cover hard
skills they don’t have. If you understand how to recruit based on “product-market fit,”
investors will be more willing to take a risk on your company.

Think of hiring as a long-term investment. The upfront cost might be a little higher,
but the rewards will be much greater. Scouting the best possible talent from the
beginning ensures a steady upward trajectory. Additionally, putting a good employee
retention plan in place can help you keep that valuable talent once you've secured it.

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Know when to Pivot
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Researching and developing theoretical

Did you know? knowledge in your chosen field can be a far
cry from actually jumping in and getting
42% of startups fail
because they misread first-hand experience. The numbers show
market demand? that issues like misreading the market or a
lack of competitive offerings are relatively
common in startups, but they don’t have to
be a death sentence.

Some of the most outstanding startups changed course and became household names
because they knew that the only path to growth was to pivot. "Pivot" is a word that's
often whispered fearfully by entrepreneurs because it's a terrifying prospect to most.
Not only can it feel like a blow to the ego, but many view it as admitting defeat or
failure.

Pivot doesn't have to be a negative thing, especially in the context of long-term growth.
Keeping the option to pivot when necessary on the table at all times might just be the
key to achieving long-term growth instead of shuttering your business and starting
over.

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Strive for Operational
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Excellence

Every entrepreneur needs insights on how their start-up is progressing and identify initiatives
to further their growth.

You must track and compare your real-time numbers and performance levels with your
business forecasts. It helps you identify your goals, measure how you are doing against the
goals, while ensuring your team is on the same page.

This can be done in 3 phases:

▪ Understanding your key KPIs, their definition and relevance.
▪ Keying in company specific data to analyze and calculate KPIs
Click to add text
▪ KPI tracking template (provided in the handout) will help you calculate and show case your
KPIs and over all start-up performance.

The Growth Stage KPIs excel sheet provided will help you keep a sharp eye on several
metrics at the same time. This information is essential to help you steer your organization in
the right direction, make key data driven decisions, and help you get "investor Ready."

Once you know your KPIs and have understood key metrics, you will be able to assess your
business performance you will be in a better position to take corrective action, and that too
well on time!

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Strive for Operational
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74% of small and medium business owners say they're willing to take big risks in the
name of possible success. However, some founders can become risk-averse over time.
This is especially true if their companies are stable and faring well.

In order to sustain growth, founders can't afford to lose their ability to take risks, both
inside the company and outside. One example of this is ensuring that you optimize
upside finances rather than focusing on cost. This feels risky because the upside gains
are uncertain, but it should be treated like just another form of investment.

Remember that you didn't get where you are today by playing it safe. Chances are good
that you won't get where you want to go by playing it safe, either.

The most important thing that founders can do is lay the proper foundation of their
business architecture from the start and work to make sure everything builds up from
there.

The innovation, passion, and entrepreneurial spirit that drove the creation of your
startup should hold an important place in your overall growth strategy.

WADHWANI FOUNDATION | CREATING JOBS CHANGING LIVES 23

Call toaction!
Step 1: Revisit your sales plan to track your sales forecasting
numbers and monitor your key metrics to ensure increase
in sales and revenue

Step 2: Identify the target customer segment for your

startup and also identify the channels that you are going
to use to attract customers.

Step 3: Monitor and track your monthly KPIs to ensure

high productivity

Templates provided in the Handouts.

WADHWANI
WADHW FOUNDATION
ANIFOUNDATION| | CREATING
CREATING JOBS CHANGING LIVES
JOBSCHANGINGLIVES 24
 nextgen.global@wfglobal.org

WADHWANI FOUNDATION | CREATING JOBS CHANGING LIVES