Cliff Farrah - Growing the Top Line

Tom Lattin, VP Product Planning and Strategic Technologies, ZT Systems

“I have known and worked with Cliff for 15 years, and seen firsthand how much Beacon’s clients—many of whom are quoted here—value and have benefited from the sharp analytical framework (and focus on the real impact of any proposed solutions) described in these pages. As one of the founders of a boutique litigation law firm, I can say that Growing The Top Line carries lessons and insights for not just Fortune 100 companies and their consultants, but any professional services business that wants to not just survive, but thrive, in a challenging competitive environment.”

Ray Austoras, Founding Partner, Arrowood LLC

CLIFF FARRAH

Copyright © 2021 by Cliff Farrah and The Beacon Group. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data is Available:

ISBN 9781119779209 (Hardcover)

ISBN 9781119779193 (ePDF)

ISBN 9781119779186 (ePub)

Cover Design: Adela Smailovic

Cover Image: © The Beacon Group

To my bride, Kim. Thanks for taking a chance on a Yankee and saying yes those many years ago. I love all that you are .

Twenty years ago, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, I started a growth‐strategy consulting firm called The Beacon Group. Like the business world, and the entire nation, we were in uncharted waters, the economy was a wreck, and we needed a path to recovery. I thought the name was fitting because, as a sailor, I knew that beacons were a critical part of safe navigation.

We were pioneers, breaking new ground in a field we called growth strategy . This was 2001 – there was no Blue Ocean Strategy or The Innovator’s Dilemma books to guide us. No class on growth strategy was offered at B‐School. We learned through trial and error by working with clients to help them scale, codifying the growth lessons we learned along the way, and by repeating them with other client teams.

Originally written as a training tool for our employees, this book began as a tool to teach consistency, a metric of quality in the services world. There are plenty of one‐hit wonders in the business world, but we’ve always been focused on how the best of the best think about growth. Consistency was our goal and, in 2010, we began using our model to show clients how we developed our growth strategies. This model has been accepted as a standard with leading c‐level strategy practitioners at Beacon’s clients. This book contains interviews from current and prior leaders at major corporations, including Intel, Medtronic, CDW, Johnson & Johnson, Juniper Networks, Nike, Pratt & Whitney, Eaton, Motorola, SAP, Chase, Raytheon, the U.S. Army, Corning, EDS, Oracle, Crate & Barrel, Texas Instruments, The World Health Organization, General Electric, and Cisco, among others. You’ll also see learnings from successful entrepreneurs and operators of nonprofit organizations. Our model applies to every form of business.

This book serves two target audiences, although I think all growth strategists will find it valuable. Audience one is a first‐time growth strategist. This is anyone new to planning the top line, or revenue growth, of a business. Perhaps they’re an entrepreneur at a start‐up or a freshly promoted employee in a Fortune 100 enterprise. If you fall into this category, this book was designed to teach you how to think about the development of a growth strategy and to give you the tools to build your own.

The second audience is the seasoned growth‐strategy practitioner, whether you’ve been elevated to run strategy across your organization or you are looking to standardize a stale or scattered planning process. It is amazing how many companies follow a patchwork approach to strategy development and struggle to maintain quality of thought and consistency of information as they consolidate plan across their multiple business units around the world.

The past 30 years have been a wonderful journey, and I’m grateful to have had opportunities to serve clients around the world as they built and executed their growth strategies. This book shares what I’ve learned throughout my career, but especially what we’ve learned at Beacon, completing over 1,500 projects in the past 20 years for our global client base.

Please read this book more than once. I’ve tried to keep the tone conversational, but the message is layered and takes some consideration to fully absorb. The stories, the process, the method are all things that, as you gain experience, you’ll find you can revisit to find learnings that you missed when you read it the first time.

Harrison sat in front of his computer, looking at but not seeing the monitor. His brain was racing, and he hadn’t slept well in over a week. A former engineer, Harrison had been put on a management development rotation. So far, he’d worked in product development, manufacturing, sales, and now was in a product marketing role. Always a producer for his team, this was an entirely new environment for him. He had done some training on marketing, but it was mid‐January, and he had been given the charter to lead the development of the strategy for his product line with a briefing due in 8 weeks for review with the business unit leadership.