In the competitive B2B landscape, above-average growth is a common ambition, yet many businesses fail to achieve this objective. According to Forrester’s State Of Customer Obsession Survey, 2024, 83% of B2B decision-makers see meeting commercial growth targets as a top priority, but only 24% are outpacing their industry’s average growth. The underlying issue? A misalignment in growth strategies that are too often aspirational, internally focused, and not attuned to customer needs.

High-growth companies distinguish themselves by being more likely to have stronger growth strategy alignment between marketing, sales, and product functions. These companies also put customer needs at the center of their leadership, strategy, and operations.

Don’t Expect A Subpar Strategy To Yield Above-Average Growth

As Yogi Berra, the baseball legend known for his malapropisms, once quipped, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else.” Simultaneously driving growth, reducing costs (or at least being more efficient), and improving customer experience at the same time is a tall order for any B2B organization. The answer lies in cocreating a customer-obsessed growth strategy across marketing, sales, and product.

This graphic shows how a customer-obsessed growth strategy is grounded in a company's visions, mission, and purpose, and is informed by business context and customer focus to drive strategic growth vectors.

Key Foundations To Develop An Effective Growth Strategy

Four foundational elements illuminate the path forward for B2B leaders:

  1. Move beyond aspirations. High-level goals such as “grow revenue by 30%” or “become the industry leader” are not strategies but aspirations. Effective strategy development must deconstruct these goals into concrete decisions, objectives, priorities, and initiatives.
  2. Align executive assumptions and decisions. Successful strategy execution requires many subordinate decisions and actions. A well-articulated growth strategy codifies executive assumptions and decisions, accelerating downstream decision-making and improving the quality and alignment of strategy execution.
  3. Pivot to customer obsession. The increasingly digital-savvy, self-directed buyer and continued market turbulence have exposed a gap in traditional B2B growth strategies. Prioritizing customer problems, needs, and expectations is crucial. Forrester’s research finds that customer-obsessed companies have significantly higher revenue growth, profitability growth, customer retention, and employee engagement.
  4. Make tough calls about focus. Resources are finite. Making exclusions explicit is key to curtailing drift in execution. A well-formed growth strategy makes what’s in scope and what’s out of scope explicit, ensuring no ambiguity when it comes time to execute.

Strategy Development Requires A Process And Cross-Team Effort

The Forrester Customer-Obsessed Growth Strategy Model offers a structured decision-making process, emphasizing the importance of the company’s vision, mission, and purpose in grounding strategy. It requires a comprehensive assessment of business context and market conditions, aiming to foster a customer-centric perspective that drives strategic growth vectors.

Developing a customer-obsessed growth strategy is a collaborative effort. It necessitates the collective expertise of marketing, sales, product, and IT leaders to bring diverse insights and ensure a unified approach toward execution. This team effort extends beyond senior leadership to include roles critical for bringing the strategy to life, such as revenue operations, portfolio marketing, product management, demand and customer marketing, and customer success.

Strategic Clarity Drives Execution Efficiency And Success

For B2B enterprises aiming for high growth, the path forward is clear: Develop a customer-obsessed growth strategy that aligns internal capabilities with external market demands. This not only ensures strategic clarity and execution efficiency but also positions companies to navigate the complexities of modern business dynamics successfully. By centering growth strategy around customer needs and fostering cross-functional alignment, businesses can unlock their growth potential. Forrester clients can read more in the report, Accelerate B2B Growth With A Customer-Obsessed Strategy, and schedule a guidance session to get started.