Go Narrow to Go Deep: Sales Strategies for Growth – Part 1

We all feel pressure to grow revenue. That often gets manifested by companies selling too many things too soon to too many people. This is usually counterproductive. 

The best way to quickly grow revenue is to find a narrower lane that you serve well. Find the best client profile for your solution as it exists today and sell hard into that niche to build your reputation / customer base. You can expand from there. 

At Entrada, we had a smartphone-based workflow solution to help doctors engage with their electronic health record (EHR) while keeping productivity levels high. We were encouraged to sell into clinic, surgery center and hospital markets because there was such a need for the product. Each of those segments had different workflows and different EHR solutions. However, they each had significant revenue opportunities. So, what did we do?  

Our marketing team made three different versions of the collateral, our salespeople learned three different pitches and our programmers started building features that would serve all three workflows. So, guess what we did next? 

After three months of this I pulled everyone together and focused us solely on clinics. It was too much. What were the results? I’m glad you asked. 

Almost immediately our growth exploded. We even took it a step further. Not only did we focus on clinics, but we narrowed that to surgical specialists due to particular features in our first module. Heck for a period of time, we spent 80% of this effort focused on orthopedists. Why orthopedics? 

I was able to land our first large orthopedic client over a breakfast chicken biscuit. Soon thereafter, we had an initial meeting with an even larger orthopedic group over a chicken cobb salad at lunch. From there, we networked with their friends in orthopedic circles and grew a huge presence in that specialty. So, what’s the moral of that story?

 Eat Mor Chiken! No, the real moral of the story is to establish a base, grow quickly within that base and then expand into tangential markets. 

That is what we did. After establishing ourselves, we sold harder into other surgical specialties. After that we added modules and expanded into all specialties. Next we grew into surgery centers. We were beginning a push into hospitals when we sold the company. 

I have a client who will have revenue approaching $3 million this year in just its second year with a product to sell. The pipeline is so rich that it has a solid chance at hitting $15 million next year. The majority of this growth will be with government entities. The pandemic has accelerated its need in government circles while slowing down commercial opportunities. What was our first reaction to that? 

Well, we started brainstorming how to grow the commercial side of the business to offset the government growth. However, we have come to realize we need to lean into this hard and embrace this channel to establish our reputation. As the economy gradually returns to normal, we will have many commercial opportunities. 

In future posts, we will discuss additional sales strategies – establishing an anchor offering that differentiates you, embracing a land grab when appropriate and knowing when to expand product offerings.

Encourage your friends to subscribe and let us hear your sales stories.