Part 3: Execute Your How

By Frank T Shaw

In part 1 of this series, we introduced a simple, three-step framework to help you scale your stuck business in 120 days or less. The framework is designed to help you create or fix your revenue engine. In this step, Find your why, we challenge you to ask a series of questions about your business. You answered them from your customer’s point of view and from your company’s point of view. 

In part 2 of this series we introduce step two, Solve your what. In step two you and your team take the answers from the first step and translate them into a strategic action plan over a five day period. By the end of the period, you have five key deliverables.

  1. A definition of your ideal fit customer
  2. A value proposition demonstrating how you solve your customer’s problem.
  3. A buyer’s journey you can use to win new business.
  4. A sequence and timeline to engage with customers on the buyer’s journey
  5. A budget, resource, and tools plan

Now it’s time to build the project around your strategic plan for a revenue engine. It’s time to Execute your how. If you haven’t read parts one and two of our series, we suggest you read them first. Part three builds on concepts and activities described in part one and two.

Step 3: Execute your how (120 days)

The success of step three, Execute your how, comes down to discipline. It’s time to get organized, take on and do the work, launch your buyer’s journey, and then measure its effectiveness and results. 

Desired Outcome

If you successfully complete step three, Execute your what, you and your team will accomplish three objectives that build  your revenue engine. You will have:

  1. Defined your plan with clear tasks and owners.
  2. Launched the first iteration of your buyer’s journey.
  3. Measured the results of your launch and identified what you can do to improve its next iteration.

We have organized our recommendations for achieving these three objectives below. 

Defining your revenue engine project

In our experience, to build a project that delivers a working revenue engine, you need two things.

  1. Clear definition of your work and related tasks.
  2. Clear ownership of the work by your team.

Keep your tasks as granular as possible. Design each item as specifically as you can. If you are successful, an individual team member can manage that task to completion in just a few days. When she completes a task, she moves onto the next. And then the next. And then the next. 

Organizing your timeline

Up to this point, we have used about six days of the 120 allocated to this journey. That leaves us with 114 days

We recommend breaking the 114 days into 9 iterations each 2 weeks long to complete step three. (Leaving 24 days, we will talk about them later in this article).

We like 2 weeks because it time boxes your effort and forces you to get into action quickly. A framework is worthless if you can’t use it to demonstrate results quickly. 

By using 9 iterations you will be able to not only get into action quickly but you will also be able to absorb and integrate feedback for improvement on what has already been completed. You will have 8 opportunities for improvement in just 90 days. 

The number one reason businesses fail is due to the lack of product-market fit by iterating you are able to improve your product-market fit dramatically in just a few weeks.  

We also like 90 days because it is an effective way to organize your efforts by development milestones:

  1. Build the journey – One iteration (2 weeks)
  2. Deploy the ‘version 1’ of the journey – One iteration (2 weeks)
  3. Measure the journey’s performance and improve – about 9 iterations (2 weeks each)

If necessary due to team size, capability, and capacity, you could adjust these milestones. The faster your team can execute and launch “version 1” of your revenue engine, the more opportunities you will have to refine and enhance the engine within the 120 day timeline.

Don’t worry if it takes you a little more than the full 4 to go through the initial release of ‘version 1” of your revenue model. You may be attempting this process for the first time with a team that’s still learning how to work together. Rest assured that you will improve each time you run step three of the framework (and the whole framework for that matter).

Rally around your customer

We also find it helps to group the work according to the buyer’s journey. This keeps you and your team focused on the customer’s experience and the sequence of content and activities your people need to follow to successfully engage your prospective customers. See below for a quick refresher on the buyer’s journey.

The Buyer’s Journey revisited

Remember, the buyer’s journey represents the sum total of steps it takes to get your target customer to buy your product/service. 

  1. Awareness
  2. Consideration
  3. Decision

Final Thoughts: Embrace iteration

We hint at this above in Organize your timeline, but we want to make sure there’s no misunderstanding. If you think the goal of step three is to deliver a fully functional buyer’s journey that starts your revenue engine in one shot, think again. It will take you multiple attempts to get your engine running smoothly, reliably, predictably. Even then over time it will change, as technology changes, as your customers’ needs change, as your product or service changes. 

You can and should think of step three as a repeatable process. Market conditions change. The needs of your customers change. The messaging and acquisition strategies of your competitors change. To thrive your business needs an agile mindset. It needs to embrace iteration. Execute your how offers the structure to run complete agile cycles repeatedly to improve your business results. 

But iteration need not apply just to Execute your how. Our revenue engine framework is designed to be repeated as a whole. That’s why we pitch this as a 120-day or less framework. We give you a recommendation for how to navigate with the flexibility to tweak as you need to.

To keep ourselves honest, let’s review how this can work by breaking the framework’s timeline down into its ingredient steps.

Step 1: Find your why: 1 day

Step 2: Solve your what: 5 days

Step 3: Execute your how: 90 days

Total: 96 days

Days remaining: 24 days

That’s 24 additional days giving you the flexibility to adapt the framework to how you and your team run your business right now. In each of the steps, you have the option of taking more time if you need it to get your revenue engine off the ground. We also provide the additional time because we anticipate you will spend time on a number of important related activities:

In step 1 we discuss researching the data to answer your Find your why questions.

In step 2 we highlight the need to identify people, tools, and processes while you Solve your what. You may need to define or refine team roles and responsibilities, hire an agency, select tools, or get rid of tools.

In step 3 we emphasize the importance of successful project management to Execute your how. You may need to rethink how your team delivers projects to move faster and more efficiently.

You may need the entire 120 days the first time you attempt to scale your stuck business with our framework. But you won’t need 120 days the second time you run the framework. Or the third time. 

Next Steps

We’ve walked you through our revenue engine framework and explained why each step matters. 

We’ve explained how to leverage each step to identify three critical items to make your engine ignite:

  1. Knowledge of your ideal fit customer
  2. A value proposition demonstrating you can solve your customer’s problem
  3. An effective buyer’s journey* that wins your customer’s business

And we’ve identified a set of best practices and timeframes you can apply to the framework to achieve success and scale for your business.

Now what? Here are three actions we recommend you take:

  1. Test step one. Interview one of your customers. 
    1. Ask them why they value your product or service
    2. Ask them about their experience buying from you
    3. Were their answers expected or did they surprise you?
  2. Email us. If you have questions about the framework, we’d love to hear from you.
  3. Download the PDF. We’ve created a simple PDF version of the framework for easy sharing with your team.

We wish you the very best in your pursuit of growth and scale. 

Here to help

If you find part three of our framework helpful but are not sure how to apply it to your own business, let’s talk. 

Request a free one-hour consultation ($850 value). Let us demonstrate how we can help ignite growth in your company.

What we cover in your free consultation:

  • What’s preventing you from growing your business?
  • What have you tried before, and why didn’t it work?
  • Where do you want to go or be? What’s your vision?
  • What resources do you currently have available?
  • What’s your timeline?

Schedule your session.