Types of Pitfalls in Growth Leadership
As a business leader, you will inevitably make mistakes in your growth strategy. The key is to recognize and learn from them. How leaders behave affects organizational culture, positively or negatively. Blame causes finger-pointing behavior at the wrong people, resentment, distrust, and unproductivity, leading to stagnation and undervalued employees.
A better leader would place more concern on why something went wrong, not who is responsible. Experienced leaders know mistakes during the learning process are inevitable. Still, they identify the root cause of failure and try to create prevention systems.
A growth mindset means embracing continuous improvement, not avoiding conflict altogether. Below are five common leadership mistakes B2B business leaders can avoid when growing their business.
1. Ignoring Their Value Story
Pricing strategy is a critical aspect that can significantly impact your business’s growth trajectory. Many leaders undervalue their services and use it as a type of growth strategy. Opting for Loss Leader Pricing or commoditization instead of emphasizing their service’s value and benefits won’t lead to sustainable growth.
Offering low prices may seem like a quick solution to attract customers, but it’s detrimental to your profit margins. Low-cost staff may also result in a revolving door and a decrease in your team’s skill level. Moreover, adjusting rates once you establish them is a challenge.
If your clients are price-sensitive, they may switch to a lower-priced option when available. It’s essential to focus on communicating the unique benefits of your service rather than competing solely on price. This approach justifies the prices you charge and establishes long-term customer relationships.
Knowing your unique value proposition is crucial for setting prices that drive long-term success. If you’re unsure of your worth, it’s a red flag that requires deeper introspection into your business model and offerings. In the end, loss leader pricing comes with too many challenges to make good business sense.
2. Thinking They Are The Best at Everything
Running a successful B2B company requires many skills, and it’s common for leaders to believe they can wear all the hats. However, this is the wrong way to run a business and a common pitfall hindering business growth. Adopt a growth methodology that recognizes the importance of discipline and teamwork in achieving results.
Being experts in your field gives you a sense of credibility to understand your client’s needs and deliver high-quality services. A deep understanding of your field can provide a competitive edge and help you build long-term relationships with your clients. Providing a targeted product line or services and selling them are different skills.
It’s rare to excel at both. Good salespeople build relationships with clients, understand their needs, and balance them with the service provider’s needs. Highlight your team member’s expertise to show candidates what they can expect. A more effective approach is using diversification strategies to create an employee roster capable of handling all business aspects.
The approach involves hiring and training employees, each with their own areas of expertise. For example, a firm might have a team of experts in project management, client relationship management, technical consultancy, and business development. This diversified team can handle winning new clients, delivering high-quality services, and maintaining client relationships.
This team growth effort solves the business leader’s mistake by spreading responsibilities across a specialized part of the team. It also fosters a continuous learning culture, as team members can learn from each other’s strengths and address weaknesses. In a sales situation, the process becomes a team effort instead of today’s business leader trying to handle everything.
A salesperson leads the conversation, while SMEs contribute their specialized knowledge to address specific client queries. This collaborative approach results in increased sales and allows team members to learn from each experience.
3. Hiring From the Competition Over for Needs
Hiring away from the competition seems like a strategic move. It provides an opportunity to bring industry-specific knowledge and experience and potentially weaken a rival. However, leaders often believe hiring away from their competition immediately brings in leads.
How can you overcome this common leadership mistake? Think about the problems your clients have and how you can solve them. Hiring your competition won’t bring immediate success.
Instead, you’ll be paying attention to new hires as they require time to adjust to your company’s culture. It may take several months of onboarding to generate leads, but they get a team offering patience and support. These hires may bring valuable expertise, but assuming the competitor’s clients will follow them to your company immediately is unrealistic.
Clients often have strong ties with the organization, not just the individual. They may also have ongoing contracts or be unwilling to switch due to uncertainty or inconvenience. From a growth perspective, hiring internally or externally makes sense if the new team member brings existing skills.
Hiring from competitors can aid in growth, but managing, setting expectations, and planning for the transition is crucial.
4. Tempted By Expansion
The prospect of geographic business expansion can be exciting and daunting, tempting you with promises of growth, power, and success. However, B2B clients should practice caution against the pitfalls of unchecked expansion. The allure of business expansion often blinds growth leaders to the risks involved. One such risk is the scattering of the organization’s focus.
Your primary responsibility is to keep your team focused on achieving the company’s core objectives. When adopting a growth strategy, expansion can dilute this focus, diverting resources and attention away from what your team does best. Expansion should align with core objectives and customer demand.
Before embarking on an expansion journey:
Expanding Without Understanding Local Market: A firm might open an office in a new region without understanding the local business culture, regulations, or client needs. Careless expansion like this leads to ineffective strategies and wasted resources.
Setting Arbitrary Headcount Goals: Deciding to increase headcount in a new location without proper planning leads to more mistakes. Hiring new employees just to meet arbitrary headcount goals leads to overstaffing. It also forces leaders to hire individuals who don’t fit the company culture well.
Neglecting Existing Markets: Geographic expansion can cause firms to ignore existing markets. While new opportunities are meaningful, maintaining relationships in current regions should be the focus of your market strategy. Poor service quality or communication can harm a firm’s reputation.
Failing to Adapt Services: What works well in one location may not work in another. Firms try to offer the same services in a new geographical market without considering local client needs, preferences, or cultural nuances. This can lead to a mismatch between what the firm offers and what the local market requires.
Avoiding these mistakes requires careful planning, thorough market research, and a nuanced understanding of the new geographical market.
5. Believe They Are a Good Leader When They’re Not
The best leaders are those who never stop learning. Sales leaders must continuously acquire new skills to keep up with market changes and prospect attention spans.
A work-in-progress sales manager is a role model who quickly gathers skills, insights, and followers. Yet, a common mistake is believing they’re an effective leader when they haven’t mastered the role.
Bad Implementers in a Leadership Position
Although visionary leaders may excel at generating innovative offerings, they may struggle to execute and achieve these plans because of:
– Inadequate planning
– Poor coordination
– Lack of follow-through
Rather than focusing on being a project leader to success, they’re too preoccupied with their projects to guide others. The team experiences strain when the leader creates new offerings, diverting resources from growth activities on existing products.
Unfortunately, the leader often abandons visionary ideas midway when moving on to another idea.
Pitfalls of Leadership – Seeks no Feedback
Furthermore, these leaders may need help gathering feedback and making necessary adjustments. Feedback is an excellent addition to growth, but it requires the willingness of great leaders to reframe mistakes and adapt.
Eventually, things will come to a head, and good employees will leave.
Visionary leaders need a competent partner to execute, launch, and get feedback for effective leadership and business growth. A growth leader is willing to learn, seek partnerships, recognize their limitations, and work to improve them.
Summary – 5 Most Common Growth Leadership Pitfalls
We are all prone to making mistakes. Recognizing and rectifying common mistakes leaders make will significantly aid your business’s growth journey.
At Sentinel Way, our growth strategists can identify common leadership mistakes hindering your progress and develop effective strategies to overcome them.
Connect with a Growth Strategist Today
Don’t let growth mistakes stifle your success. Contact us today to discuss how our services help your firm pave the way to sustainable business growth.
